176-10030-10168

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AGENCY: NARA ;
RECORD NUMBER: 176-10030-10168 [Dup /4¢-se029-/ 0085)
RECORD SERIES: ORAL HISTORY
AGENCY FILE NUMBER :
Document Information
ORIGINATOR :
FROM:
TO:
TITLE : ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW WITH EDWARD G. LANSDALE
DATE: 07/11/1970
PAGES: 124.
SUBJECTS :
VIETNAM; CUBA-BAY OF PIGS
- DOCUMENT TYPE: TRANSCRIPT :
CLASSIFICATION: Not Marked
RESTRICTIONS: 1B
CURRENT STATUS: Redact
DATE OF LASTREVIEW: 06/26/1998
OPENING CRITERIA :
COMMENTS: sanitized version

34

roo. eS : ¢

fe Shuiritgo Me I99 + Too.

Oral History Interview

- with
Dyed. >
ATR, Lansdale

IS

July 11, 1976
Alexandria, Virginia

By Dennis J. O'Brien

For the John F. Kennedy Library

O'BRIEN: I think a logical place to begin in anything —
. * like this is just simply with the question;
when did you first meet President Kennedy,
or Senator Kennedy, if you met him before
he was President?
LANSDALE: . I don} recall meeting him before he was
T kehe? Qe
Presidento. The first meeting,was/ I~belisve, _
the first Saturday following the inauguration,
whatever date that was. I was called into a.
meeting in the White House by {Robert s.)
‘McNamara. It was a neeting,om, actually, on

a report that I had written for (Dwight D>

Eisenhower, It was sort of 24 _ i'n not sure

vw @

-2-
that it was,NSC (National Security Council]
meeting )but it was comparable to that with

A
the ‘personnel that were attending. There were
several Secretaries: Defense, state, and his 7

National Security people were there.

: 6 { ,
O'Brien: Beds cave mars cectesy with McNamara and PReswel J

4

——

Glopeatrlsc, uembers of the ‘incoming administra- woe
tion, before they actually assumed office?
LANSDALE: Just before, that is,a day or so before. I'd
eo A -
' been in Vietnam for a brief visit and got back
. 4 Gust before the. inaugural, maybe two or three
days, and at that time both McNamara and.
' Gilpatric were in Defense getting briefed for
their new jobs. I met them at that time. oO
The outgoing Deputy Secretary of Defense asked .
me to start working with Gilpatric, and so I
to Know A :
got Gilpatric rather than MeNamarag,
CJemes
O'BRIEN: This is, Douglas.
LANSDALE: Douglas, Jin Douglasa@lai aesciponglasD

' Q'BRIEN: How is Douglas to work with, while you're with

him? Is he a pretty sympathetic person?
LANSDALE: Yes, very much so, very much som He was ‘the

one, actually, who wrote the orders and back-


O!.BRIEN:

“LANSDALE:

stopped my visit to Vietnam, and back-
stopped it principally so that I could take

a look at some of the political factors as

well as economic, military, and psychological *

and everything else. This, frankly, took a
consi. ° Lot -_ Weanding on his part.
. chat because my views weren't always .
sopular in other parts of the governnente
I gathered that there was some opposition to:
my going out, and he insisted on it.. .
I'd like to ‘come back to that. I wonder if
we could go on to talk about one of the major

problems, which is Cuba. When is the first
a.

". time that you hear: about the Bay of Pigs

invasion’ not the Bay of Pigs, but the plansty,

Sometime in the. fall of sixty I think that

I heard’ of it about the first time that it

was brought up to the -saneex-policy group of

the Eisenhower administration. I was the
Peputy Assistant to the Sécretary of Defense,
at the time, for Special Operations and used
to accompany the Deputy Secretary, who was a

han Oy
member of the Anterpolicy group, to most of
A

-4-

the meetings that th: vad. When Allen Dulles

oe .
(Ailen-W.—Dullesp ~.. st raised the notion to

Weed VAnNeLT

O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

ais

e/Senate” grour:, I was present at the meeting

as an plssist: . , ’

What is ‘the :ainking about it at that time?’
What kind of operation is ee ~» it

ve r ; .
basically a guerilla operation at this point?

Initially,it was. Initially,it was very differ-
A

rom “ . .
ent them the way it turned out. It was based

on a ‘premise thet ms many people in Cuba were very
unhappy with fhe etre administration and the
way it was turning away from the initial
revolutionary objectives and the capture of ‘the
revolutionary movement -by the Communist Party,
which surprised many of the supporters of °
Castro as a guerilla and as i revolutionary
actnon. so the. thought was to back a number

of” Cubans who either had been supporters of

Castro or were very unhappy» “were still resident

in Cuba, and to cause some overturn at the time.

The change of plan towards the Bay of Pigs
gradua\td)
thing evolved tainty regiclyand apparently

there was a | planning group | ena CIA § (Central -


O'BRIEN: -

LANSDALE :

O' BRIEN:.
LANSDALE:

O'BRIEN:

Intelligence Agency) who were working on this
initial plan who started thinking in military

invasion terms. I suspect that they were

. doing that because some of the Cuban military.

and military types], that is)very militant,

Po. = 4

kro ple “aS, were coming, out of

a

Cuba as” reiugees, and they suddenly saw a

windfall of mafi~ power and started thinking in
other terms of use of them. But / this-ohange?
was, the changed plan towards the Bay of Pigs —

wand Joly: r

: dhe
thing,jwas well under way in the inn er circle

thinking of CIA by December of "60, very defi-
A

nitely so .

Who were some of the inner, circle people at
you recall ?

this point, (Pterres ay) Salinger; 600

OBRIEN: DeeecRherd m1 Bissell vas, a

Let's seep os Oh golly. A Dick Bissell j

~ eiiisharer He BrsselD> | was the overall chief of

.. the group.

Tracy Barnes, was he in it at ‘that time?
Tracy was'an assistant to hin), "yo nhig WTO)
Tracy, went in the aaah planning. 74 ee my
doubts that he was. . . O°

How about Sroe., William roe. ?

(festhim—v¥-Bxoe]


LANSDALE:

O'BRIEN:

the planning

-6-

. He was one of a planning ‘group who were

ahs
planning the operation, but he wasn't pe chief,

and I can't. recall the. guy! s name offhand.

Oh well, maybe when youg get the transcript back;
‘LANSDALE MBYybe Sdo oO
you can. » How about . fre: ‘some of the other

t ite
cn Woh Cea se tw

places ’ a c1) Mann, I

Greve
iin aes

LANSDALE: " Ses, but initially it was all CIA. “They,

borrowed some military personnel to help with _
early OW)

jearbien? but they were people -

who had been attached to CIA for temporary -
duty on other matters, and they hadn't come

' din initially for this specific planning. In

December, when the planning had obviously

started-coming in with a beach landing and so

on, the way it turned out, I urged at that

point to “get military planning in on the
thing. I was worrying about vt. Tas a matter
of fact, Allen Dulles brought his planners

to a policy meeting, a policy group meeting, —
and they were explaining the concept, end ny
questioning was such .that Allen Dulles pleaded
with me not to spoil the pian at an early .

A.

+ O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

_ them to get some rm‘

a

‘stage. I remember General (Lyman Li).

Lemnitzer was sitcing in Othe meeting; —

4

je was chairman of the JCS (Joint Chiefs of

Start} at the time, ‘and he backed up my urging

7itary planning in on thats.
After th ee  .aviit among our
DOL: | oe pae of that, and then the JCS set up.

@ special section to plan along with the

This is yet in the Eisenhower administration.
‘This is all back in 1960. This was still in
sied“early planning stageso ‘This -was vefore

When the JCS got into the act, I asked to be

disassociated with the project. I was rather

ook.
critical of the concept, and it wae) just . too
, OANA

clumsy and overt} and a poor-planned 25eSPe

Kk dhe)
Avot of ‘people. have knowledge of this, by the

end of the Eisenhower administration?
I don't know how widespread it was. There -
were key executives that were knowledgeable,

there was a small group in the JCS that was

Hrovgheot . °

(central—Intelligencé) | agency | on that. ’ And who 7

the hell headed that?

| training or anything like that was put forward. _

pernmen


O'BRIEN:

_ LANSDALE:

"thought it was rather closely held.

knowledgeable, and there was a planning group
at CIA, but I don't think it went beyond that.

I don't know how far it was known, but I

You don't knew whether the preside-tial candi-

“dates - at all,.do you?”

Ye.  ..sy were. There was a very definite,

no, wait a minuteg the candidates, no, I don't

-. think they were. As a matter of fact, it was.
in Yhic

. still ina rather nebulous stage ‘es, shifting
‘over in Caray Novenberg I think somebody

told me, if I recall correctly) that the concept -
was in the form.of a memo in CIA about August,
so this would be well after the candidates

had been nominated and so on. I imagine that
ius

i?
- it was ne1a i, two or three people in, the CIA
A

A
Ou
at the time. At-teast, the rest of us certainly

' didn't know it. I forget exactly when I first

heard it, but it would be possibly October,
put it might have even been November, by the -

time I heard about it. As I say, I heard.

“about it when it was surfaced with the inner -

_ circle of our administration executives.


O'BRIEN:

- LANSDALE:
O'BRIEN:

‘LANSDALE:

O'BRIEN:

-9-

Well, I suppose you had some conversations

with Dulles and with Bissell and some of

‘these people about it.

Yes. 7

What's their feeling? You already discussed
Dot. es - using you to sort of —
hold your criticism, . -@ —
Well, Bissell definitely felt the same waye

Bissell was a very ‘hard-working, intenselperson, |
ar

. almost high; strung type of,individual. - He

became rather impatient with my questioning

of: the. changed concegt when it took place. Jo Hog hp

that
nitially, - -if-they had the correct personnel

‘and they had a correct reading of dissent _

inside of Cuba, that was a.fair chance to do

something. My only concern at the time was/;

dia eee” CIA have ¢he»Americans who could work.

with such a situation? I Just” didn't know -
es,

of any, “but I was assured that there were such
Americans but I'm not certain that there were.
Did you question the kind of intelligence that
was coming out about Cuba and the expected

reaction of Cubans” to an invasion /‘and the

| LANSDALE: |

-10- |

reaction to Castro in general?

‘Just in very general terms. = didn't have

os enough concrete and specific information

O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

; myself that was separate from theirs. Most -

of the intelligence take at the time, avail-
able inside the U.S. governnent, was pretty -~

colored with this dissatisfaction and state-.

ments of, it. “soft had no real way of ©

determining the accuracy or inaccuracy of it.

| Some of the adjectives used in describing this

in briefings to us alerted. o° a little bit.
- mas

It Just Sounded ,+00 much, Seda sales job on

a viewpoint. I'd question that, whether that

was an accurate thing, so this is about as far

as I went. |

How Seed a guy like Douglas react? Do you

recall? ;

Well, he approved of . the plan, so he and the

others at the policy level approved of going

ahead ‘with it fend. developing it. I was his

advisor on this thing! (that was my staff job),
a’

. and I told him to be certain to get the JCS

to give ita real hard scrutiny and to. come

r

; O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

~ll-

up with details of whether it could succeed

or not. That was my last advisory role with

him. I was taken off advising on the project

~ after that, actually by my own request because

‘I was apparently causing too much trouble and

Wa va :-2ks of progress.

ets tae reaction of the Joint Chiefs, people
like -Lemnitzer, towards this? Is there an |
institutional rivalry or bureaucratic rivalry
here in their minds? _ .

Somewhat, somewhat qt was a little bit as
though,’ well, somebody's going to be playing
Boy Scouts, so this isn't really rivalry.

They had. a difficult time taking this really. -
seriously. Later, I know, when the JCS got

ard felps
in,on the actual planning of this, they became
A .

. much more serious on it because they had a
share of it. |
Well, do you get involved in the informing

' of McNamara and Gilpatric about this? Do you

get any way of sensing what their reactions

are on first being informed? -

No. They had apparently known by the time I


O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

-12-

ne : ——
met them), Tl didn't, get in on that The one
would have,
person who a view of their reactions
twrillta on fa

would probably = Bundy, (etre B .
shi who I know at the time was discussing
this with them.-

Did you have. re sa oundy and

his fic | ve ~e ae that. point?

Yesg ‘nis was a Little out of Bundy’ s field.

- He was always trying to figure. out what - the

chances» were, the percentages of win or losso

He was, 1ovg arid I hadn't known the final plan

on this thing, and Bundy did, ane he asked me

what I thought. I told hin, “wellyif the JCS»
maybe shade -

guarantees something, you canWtaie, it. 10 percent

lower than that and 40 along with itm I'm not-

~ sure that they know a clandeStine operation, |

but they'd Sure know a military landing, whether
it would succeed or not. Given some of the -. ©
. ° why) shade ts .
unknowns in this thing, J eae they 10 percent”
and go along with the figure. “ ’ Well, apparently
a
they had given it a high chance of success,

the JCS had, because Bundy said, "Well, you mean

| A py 4
it's going to succeed then{ I said, Well, I.


O'BRIEN: .

so DBR

So

don't know." ,1 gathered that he felt it would

succeed.

ven) then /’you are pretty much out of touch
\_ From the Pont hak ev we tutle ifs
A

. with it until it actually comes" off, You Nw 8! That's

LANSDALE:

O'BRIEN:

“LANSDALE:
O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

O'BRIEN: |

A

@ obmEW,

' didn't get inthe any of the changes: in the

-
plans there at all oo,
September seth -— tes
No. I left ‘& around the. first of,December, . ..

"60. I really didn't: follow it from then on@
Does

fr’ anyone come to you from the Agency/ or
from State) or “Prem the White House, as far-

A
as that goes, and attempt to seek an indepen-. —

+ auaet , ; ard Lh on su
dent judgbaent on your party sper backenend BPM Pek
No. , . me
How about the noise level on this?. Obviously |
you're out of it, but is there much talk ©

about it that is ‘sort of filtering down

; words ;
‘in Defense “andthe people that are around you”.

that really have no need to know and direct ©

involvement?

I wasn't ‘aware.of it. There might have been,

‘but Ihave no knowledge of that.
When @né=thines the operation? actually begins _
and the landing has taken place, do you come 7

7
¢ .


} LANSDALE:
O'BRIEN:

~14-
into it again at that point. at any time?

No.

You do become involved in Cuban affairs at a

"- later time.

LANSDALE:
O'BRIEN:

_ LANSDALE:

Later, yes.
ks
When ¢2 yo% "24 you. have-any-
thls aw Wa the Ween) Taylor
committee?” uht ch makes Ha Hea in gust Y abgut it ?
I met with them once, and. they weren't biterested
with the Bay of Pigso. They were interested

in the decision-making processive making. bof

-policy, and ‘asked me if I had any ideas on

how better the Bresident could be served in
the policy decisions and arriving at them.

The thing was, right at that moment, McNamara

-had previously asked me for the same thing)
. : . “A
-and I had ‘come up with a proposal for him

. which he put to. Kennedy. I just told them?

o of ; a
Weil, I had some ideas but I had given them -

to somebody else, and I was skeptical of the

boss anyhowg). ad this was on putting together -

task forces. The Kennedy administration had

eliminated: a bureaucratic voonédoggling thing


-15-

sr what the hell was that called’ —
O'BRIEN: cet ” (Operations Coordinating Board]g
LANSDALE: Yes, the OCB) I pointed out that the one. _
good thing about it was that the principals
met for lunchyand 1 said the. pest of at's Gr. Re birds
Pat to set men an osc coven who are talking
' to we ye a ew are held responsible by
. him for managing men, money, and material and | a
so on, who can understand the problem well a
, enough around. the lunch table to have one
"secretary or “deputy secretary or under secretary
, = say, ‘well, -we'll take care of that: Lie mee
good way of doing business a ith the
- president's own’ national security man sitting
in on it, going back and telling him this is’
og going to happen for these reasons, why, it
. was a good control. mechanism. F so essentially
all I told the Taylor ‘people and told
McNamara in my paper was that this ‘function nad .
been eliminated, along with cutting out t diot of
dead wood, and there was some live wood a, “pow

about restoring the live wood? This oseutiatyy

was what my proposition was with the task force,
. A


-16-

of getting the people most concerned with
something} who could operate for: the

president, and having them get together and -

help form the policy, get the president's
approval, and they were the same ones'who
could;st-~ _ """" = 12 immediately.
Oe -~ 4ut to create another big

vureaucratic thing. 7 and of course, after they

_ first tried this, it rapidiy started becoming |
a big bureaucratic thing. the task forces
that were later set up were just big staffs
sitting;in different buildings. It was
almost: like OCB again, not guste: but it got

' out of hand. Anytime you aes? to change. the

government around, it seems to come right back

. A Yoo BE EN! Yes) we have a tendeney of doa
-dn form again and close ranks on a But “that “40 Lani

‘was all,I did with the Taylor group. Inciden-
tally; in that inquiry into the. Cuban bit was |
ye the first time that I met (Robert F.) Bobby
, Kennedy. For some reason or other, I didn't
. . A
-- connect him personally , with the pictures of
mP . wed NeResthet 9 P

him and so on, on TeVg, and I wondered what the <— Ivo-

youngster was doing sitting in the meeting


_

O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE: -

O'BRIEN:

_. LANSDALE:

O'BRIEN:

'. government would operate at a decision level,

= -17-

talking so much.”

Was he pretty tough 7
Well; he wasn't bough. - He was thé most indver- i
ested of anyone in the room there of what I |
would say on things and plague me with many

guestions.

How were his questions? Was he fairly naive

_ about the problems?
Nog, this was on Brobions questions of how the

. A
and they weren't naive at.all. He had a very

good understanding. He was very much concerned’
about his brother’ getting good servis in the —
way of information and full details “of elterna-
tives and so on, on a policy decision.

Well, Ef you;-You-know, in that period right

after the’ Bay of Pigs--of course you had a lot

.. Of contacts. and friendships in other places

LANSDALE: Yes. O'BRIEN:

. outside the Pentagon. , What kind of an impact -

doet
Acid? the Bay of Pigs have, let's say over in.

the Agency) and State Department, and in Defense,
“A _ A

and in the White House?


~16-

' LANSDALE: It was a traumatic: experience at top Loveland
. of the government. I think it affected
President Kennedy more than any other single
. an A .
thing. It was almost a taboo subjectgif you
were going in to do business and to get an
approv:2 sn somethin wi: “ever even hinted
x oa Such
CAGU Juba or. . ~uban affair. “It was an
sutense rly. sore subject.among all of these
people. I felt that almost all of the key
, executives in the administration must have
dreamt about it at night or something, end
' during the daytime working hours they: just
even n2yew
didn't even want to, contemplate it. and yet -
they were honest enough people that they knew .
they had to face up and look. at it and. would ‘ao
so,.but it was an extremely emotional subject
with then, very ‘much so. .
O'BRIEN: Well, in terms | of the Agency, there's a “number
. of programs end, of course involvements in
A
operations that they have. Do you see any
shift in these, any attempt on the part: of the

" Defense Department to move into some of ‘these

areas which they felt were traditionally theirs.


(=19--

rather than the Agency. I guess. what I'm

trying ae sey is, can you see any decline in

~~

the father influence Tie? tne Agency "EE aecisions?
LANSDALE: Yes, I think so. i'n 1 not certain that at was
. _ the military as such. It night, have been the -
tei Poet “2K McNamara personally, -
par encouragement of. some of the military who -
were somewhat interested but wouldn't really |

have expressed the interest unless they were -

directly asked a and: there always had been some.

Fa feeling of junease think would be the best | 2

“word to describe it] -onong the military about

any clandestiney operations. They felt that

once it got over into guerrilla type of operations
. or anything that would involve a military subject,
| thet it would be far better to let the military —

establishment of the U.S. handle it. # aut that.
would be sort of a dintior-codbail party type of

a gambit on their: pert,ratner than sitting and

planning and so on of “twe must grab some of

thie,

pate," | Fiven though among themselves they talked

that way. They aiaa't express “it ‘in terms of -

their attendgnce at policy councils or even in


-20-
\
‘talks with peoplé| Like the ecretary of Defense
or the civilian, executive side of Detense. On
this, I think thet McNamara himselt probably.
- started thinking initially that, this was & 7
military operation and just to be more efficient
and effective,the military should take over
" silch things. 1 imagine that he palked that way
to some of the military people ‘ef were seeing
“him from the JCs, awd. the Chiefs, and from the
intelligence community, the military intelligence
community. I know that DIA [Defense Intelligence
Agency]. got its great start under McNamara,and -
I feel almost certain, I've got a strong hunch,
that the Bay of Pigs and the misreading of the |
; temper of the people in’ Cuba gave McNamara
great impetus in setting that up initially.
A307 sotualty, wasn't a military ambition

to set up 4 vival intelligence ‘agency to Wve
CIA, though there had been tremendous rivalry
between the military service intelligence
agencies and tie CIA and had been right along.
from the initiation of GIA originally. But this —

-was sort of a business rivalry,and it wasnt |
A So,

-21-

_ Sort of dealing with them, of categories of

work, and where the boundary lines of) who did
what on the things and this is where their
jealousies and emotions and everything would
come up over almost nitpicking of boundary lines

of who would do what. It wasn't a thing of

. \ we'll do it ali, and you go out of pustness that

feeling hadn't come up/-- but kate Eloe after the
Bay of Pigs, the DIA and its creation, a lot of |

- . the people in that who were civilian employees,
: : _ A

O'BRIEN: |

LANSDALE: .

Defense Department employees, had an idea, "We —
can do a better job than CIA," and in a much.
wicor field than the service intelligence agencies
pest aone. a ,

Are there enough. skilled and “competent people

around, in the universities and the military,

' to staff all the intelligence agencies: the NSA

(National Security Agency], DIA, CTA, and organi-

zations? Are there enough people or are these
point | ?

operations just simply too viel,

Wadadeed They might be too big. me need to

know things is a very elastic bit. I'm certain

that the chief executive of the United States,

O'BRIEN:

“LANSDALE:

in whose name these works are accomplished, -

would have no idea that he would ever desire .

“to know: some of the ‘things that they're working ©

on very nargZyou discover whole buildings
and all sorts of equipment pusildy accumulating

facts --" cmzes » yould say, iI can't

8G .. 2sutes ever needing to know sone

of that "ak yet he would hesitate, given the
“A.

world today and the technological advances and...

everything, it's very hard to say what you need

to know and what you don't. Given this sort of
a gray shading of the end objectiveslon this

thing, it's very difficult to say whether youve.
got £00 bigan establishment or not.

Do you ever take this question up, or is this

_ question ever raised in the administration by He

civilian people in DOD [ Department of Defense]
or the White’ House, with you?
Not with me. No. My theme on. overseas operations

was reiterated enough so that it was known by

_ @ number of peoples, and I audse felt eet it wh i

A
more efficient and effective to have a very ~

small group working and to choose them with very


-23-

. great selectivity and go for a handful of
highly qualified people rather than a large
group, of Americans charging overseas someplace.
‘This went for intelligence as well as diplomatic a
and other. economic work, and soon. TI used to .
; point out the embassies--for example, ‘behing
_.the Iron ‘Curtain-- that would get desdimated by -
Cs being | TINT ana so’.ong in Eastern Europe)
(S for example, it would neppeng ee voura wind up
with an ambassador and two or three people
left in an embassy, and their work would increase |
in quality, and their representing U.S. interests
‘would seem to improve tremendously when that
would happen. .
O'BRIEN: Does the werk that you get this reputation,
mainly out, the writings of guys like [Eugene]
Burdick and Graham Greene, does this affect you
in any way in your relations with the bureau-
cracy? | ' 7
LANSDALE: Yes. It made life rather difficult. With
7 . much of the work, I had to do in Washington,
I came back from a lot of operations abroad

and went up into policy-forming levels in


-c-

Washington almost immediately, and into facing

‘people who were very sensitive on my presence
abroad initially. Since I didn't just stick
in.a regular military category but would get
over into their own subject matter, this made
' them very unconfortablep en can ‘understand
it. while it happened but it was carried to

| too great an emotionel length.“ at times I

"would suggest certain individuals be sent to
look into a situation in a given country and
would: arrange their: transportation. and so ong
ea I would get backing throughout the U.S.

- government for this thing/ and have an individual
approved by the Secretary of State’ as well as
Defense and up at the White .House and so on,
put would set up a means of communicating
back so that we would get reports back. There
wipula be times: when these individuals would.
‘show up in. a country, and the first time they

sent a message to ma, the ambassador would

ask them kindly ‘to Seave- the country, to get

out of there, just because of my name. I wou.
wash .

apparently, the enemy to some, of these


as.

FI

oetween. Thailand and Saigon, and there was a
2

people. One of my assistants was traveling

‘coup going on in Saigon at the timepgan@ hi

plane, which was Air France, put down--commercial
“NN . . . .

“A ; . .
flight--in Phnom Penh, in Cambodia, and the

military attache very kindly picked up this.
)

guy and several other Americans from the
plane and found a place for them to stay
until they could get another flight out of

Phnom Penh. He asked this lad of mine where

he'd worked, and he said, "In the Pentagon,"--

he was a civilian employee--and he mentioned
that he worked for mey)and the attaché got

ve
all excited, called the ambassador, and he

was given two hours to come out of the country.

[Laughter] All he was doing was looking for .

a place to sleep at nightg so it became very

‘emotional and very silly, and detrimental to
the U.S. For example, once in Indonesia, in
meeting our folks around the embassy in
Djakarta, I had spotted an assistant army
attaché, who was the one aAmericen, along with.

; A
one of the economic mission guys--there were

226-

two Americans, 1 “who ' were / not only best known
by the Indonesians but were respected, and
. oy Aneta
. there was an affection thereg. and I Kite, told
re
the ambassador at the time, afterwards,,. ‘neke

of
real use of: these people f, the Indonesians

a believe them, and there's some antipathy towards

the U. ae but they make an exception. tF tnese
twopand. they! re just invaluabied put the army

man was extremely close to the general staff

of the Indonesian army. I went on some visits

to members at their homes of the Indonesian Cine
staff, and this lad who was tall and blond--
a Nordic. type, if you will--would go in,and -
the small brown Indonesians qweut ‘and their
fami lies+welcome him Like a long lost uncle/
or brother or something. The children would
run up and jump in his arms and climb all. over
him, and he was Uncle J something to them:

Fo later, when ‘the Soviets start moving in

| sand’ [ surtace- to- -air mi sgie] missile sites into
' Indonesia and the U.S. needed to know what

|

sort of antiaircraft armaments werdgoing inj

-our embassy couldn't get the answers to its

. -27-

I suggested that.we. get the State; Defense
: ; mo ; wrtrty
' sponsorship and send this one fellow who ,s
- @ lieutenantzcolonel over and just let him’ -
stay a week or so. He'd go right in and
talk to his old friends) and they'd probably
tell him what: the. soviets were up to. He
arrived theref’ the Indonesian general staff
a ~ ~ sites
took him out and showed him these 53 and.
asked him what he thought of them and so on
‘the first day he was there. That night he
ke r
got back, and wrote out a-radio message/ and
asked the ambassador to send it to me) at
. A

. which point our ambassador told him to leave ©

the countryguw-—/
Co [Howard P.7\
O'BRIEN: Now) this was, Jones?

- LANSDALE: | That was Jones, yeso ae And he said, "Well,
. . let me put that in. the messages)" sol just .
asked the Department of State, +" please let
Jones know that you! re sponsoring this guy)
‘ | - too,.snd there might be some more things that
he finds out that you ‘need to know as much as

1

an?) a +0 a 7
we do. .So they told Jones ,just &> sit back

O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

' ~28-

and let him do that.

_We have some wonderful Americans) and this
was what I was trying to do) to find out
which Americans have not only: our interests

at heart but were enough interested in foreign

-0@unte fer to Be stl toe understand and have

Py

mpa a veally would be serving the best
interests of other countries: in things. I'd

far rather see one man get in on something

like that than- send a whole team in with all

sorts of nings Jana sort of aggravate a
situation, than do something rather simple. ,
Almost sensitivity training. . 0

SAY paths Incidentally, along these lines,
I've: got a good story for your account.
Great. ° -

About’ the time of the Cuban Missile gvisia,

McNamara came back from a meeting at the

White House one day and asked me to provide

the means for President Kennedy to talk to

- the Cuban people on TaVs, How. the hell did I
a

o-

know how to do that? He told me-set-he

wanted to do it within the next twenty-four

-29-

hours. Well, it didn't happen. I suspected
thet it, would take longer than that; I don't

- . : o . _ U
know how you intrude on a TW Stations
broadcasting and get the people in the

a 79°
country to 26 inmediatelyat to their TAY Sets
.and watch a program. “I called scientists
in from all over the U. Ss, who were electronic
whizzes on this type of a subject, and our
intelligence people and everybody else I
could think of. to get some information
; cA ;

together in a real crash basis. CIA couldn't

2 cechniaal deterred

give me details, e% technical details<on any

- A 2
of the TaVy, stations - in Havana’ and elsewhere. .

Fone of the Defense civilian scientists--and I
can't ‘think of his name of fand; Bast. European
name--left .the room and came. back ten minutes

“later and provided all the technical infor-
mation, to the great amazement of everybody |
there. and I said, Where the hell did you
get that ?/‘ana he said, "Well, I went out to
the corridor in the Pentagon/ (shere we were

having the meeting) wnt in one of the phone

booths there;’ and . called a friend of mine

O'BRIEN:
LANSDALE:

- 30-

down in Havana who ‘operates a 2K Matation
and asked him. He gave me all (pee cope, and
I. just wrote it dow." So this is the “way
we got the information for it." one intrusion .
of the tiv space never took place, but we
got the means together and some airborne lv I~
transmitters. It. was developed finally by the
hoe that 2 be

Navy, and the project--Itwe"asked iS put on
a sort of sled so that it could be picked up
and changed over from one aircraft to enother,
or used elsevhere“ later when we started the
rit oroadcasts in Vietnam, this Navy equip
ment that was “Initially intended to let

; Tee a ae
President Kennedy talk to the Cubans ,was the

proadcast equipment that was used from the

dor
‘air--flying in the aircraft--in Saigon downs CO!
to initiate tht /proadcast?”in Saigon in °
1965.

Ly

why didn't it come off?

ovt
It took us too. long to figure, ways of getting ,
in on the. theme and finding a channel and

. ; 40
finding a way of getting people thet’ do that.


ee ee St Nt ae me edie wesmeathtethis © peel

O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE;

-31-

It took us tien “tuielive days to do it, and the
time for them to do it had passed over, and

“A
the Russiaris stood down in the interim, so the.

need had passed.

'. ¢Well how do you come back into. . oo well,

mayba, perhaps we ought. to pursue this whole

business of counterinsurgency first. It sort
of becoines the thing with the Kenne dy admin-
istration, doesn't it?

Yes.

How do you see that? JI was in the Marine
ox, Ffties

Corps in the late 50*s) and there was a good

: A .
‘deal of guerrilla and counterguerrilla training

that was going on, and it becomes a part of »

the new administration. Who are the principte+

‘proponents of this, outside of yourself? Do

you have any conversations, say, with Bobby---
well, you don't really see Bobby ‘antil after
Aprilg But do you have any conversations with

the president, let's say, meeting with him. ..-

No, ‘no,I didn'tg “I don't know who talked to him

‘ about this. When he came in office, this was

already one of his themesg Where he picked
’

-32-

that up originally, I don't know. I-was

rather surprised--he seemed to have seen

copies of lectures and other things that

hot?

. Ive’ given on the subject, me, who had

-O BRIEN:

__ LANSDALE:

4

O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

' OQ BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

passed those to him and who had talked to

him about it; I just don't know.
Let's say, let's take a person like Max Taylor.

Do you have anything in the way of conversations

with Max Taylor in the late fifties?

No.

‘How about the rest of the Joint Chiefs?

No. Taylor was opposed to this type of thinge

' He did quite:a considerable switch, see? ' He

was about the last person I would have’ ever

picked ‘to have headed up something the way
qv _— 7

Kennedy asked him to do it©

That's what I was wondering about, Taylor's

role in this whole thing. He is opposed@® -

2

Well, he was the one that<>in the very early

te a

rere re or entries ae dee en ee

-33-—

formation of the Special Forces in the Axrmy-- .
; he was Chief of Staff of the Army at the time J-—
‘arr took one look at these american troops: in
green berets and said, "Take that God damn silly

headgear off," or "Take that--that's it." No

ri. - pally ae Four h om oy
g&een berets, and ne pitetife TDS oe

+r

_ the thing. He wasn't too happy with a special
} ; -
| unit of that nature. But-at the time, it was.

' He went along with the concept that

e . ’ .

|
\. it was only a wartime outfitAthat somebody
A
would have to go and jump in and work with

oe ° ’
gquerrillas. again, this is a rivalry type of

a thing,so there wouldn't be another OSS loffice

A cect werent

of Strategic Services] ~-theze“d be a CIA or”

something doing it, but this, afterall i part -

A
of the modern military function) so. let' s: ‘make
“A
it military. “$0 he went that far on the thing.

. . Neale
But that was a concept--gyou ° j have a regular

force fighting battle)and someplace ivack of. the
A

enemy lines, you'd want to blow up bridges and

A

-34-

gather information and so on to support

your tactical force? so well why not have
. a A > . .
somebody in working and fomenting trouble

back there for the enemy, but connected with

v

the torces? Now the concept of peoples war-.
Haak Gees tbo | ;
fare mow is. pushed, We've seen jpeent in Vietnam:

_ &
and elsewhere! feally wasn't something that

he or others understood at all, that almost
van Wwoutd. be. oe
all of us speak—see—guerrrlrator counter-guer— _
' rilla, and that people like special forces
\ pishe well,' having learned guerilla operations,

would—then be qualified to start coping with

[eal would understand the importance of

j political basis for operations and political.

!
|
| goals and behavior and the psychological part

\
¥ . . .
‘\of.the operations This really wasn't in

any of'their thinking because, as witnessed in
Korea, we went and sort of had a small World

War II in Korea. And in Vietnam later, we went

in
A

P wgain with Taylor ag the ambassador, but

O'BRIEN:

-35-

having quite a bit of an advisory role with

e

abe @ ;
pot military commanders out there, and influence
ack wre . . _— ~ :

with them,‘was” fighting another Korea in Vietnam
ye, ; ,
more or less. There wes some changes in tactics,
4 . . , ‘ A

. ib
but, was more use of helicopters just for: verti-

cal envelopment nother instead of

Sfart
moving guys along the ground to,with the thing.
Qe

Why don' t they come to an understanding? f{parking]
epee

LANSDALE+—=E!m=suré that's going to makexa-:good=broadcast—

ae

em
for-youy-“axgood-tape.” .
wo)

. . . = Lo, . .
O_BRIEN:—-A—diversionuwatzleast.

LANSDALE:

O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

I'm completely. baffled by that. I just don't
know. .
Don't they read?

They speak the words, and particularly when they
were talking with President Kennedy, they picked
up the words and enthusiasm. and responded, but

would show by what they did that they didn't

understand what they were saying. It's some-

thing that, of course, I have been trying to


~36-

do something about all along. I've never

- ; «i ‘
-understood what it wash. - @ I've always

gelt that I was too inarticulate or: hadn't
found a way of doing. things for myself, but
there have been so many other exponents of

this thing--not just, Americans, -but of many
countries, who 1 have written rather good books

‘on the subject and on parts of ieAtnat you ‘a

by now
surely think, that we Americans would produce

7 top Lender some understanding of some-
” < LVo Mgayen] |
/\thing that Mao [Tse<tung] and,Giap and others

: o- We
. Cc ‘have got tz , every page down -throwgh the rank

| and file to undérstand. ‘ene 7

; \ Jf [cau nterinse ge J

O BRIEN: Well, in the formation of the CI,group--it was
designed, as I understand it, primarily as a
kind of educational group for top-level admin~
istration people--when do you first come into
that group?

“LANSDALE: I was never really, part of that group. I was

working with a smaller group of executives, of

Which Taylor was a part

O'BRIEN:

“- LANSDALE:

-37-

This is Mongoose, ‘isn't it?

Yes, This was a national security group of.

top executives.close to the president, with
the undersecretary of State, and the deputy

secretary of Defense,and so on, and the
/ A ee .

national ‘security advisorp anG Taylor sat

in on those meetings after he got his CI

group going. But/ in forming the CI group

“inddeianty, Taylor was starting to do some

“studies for Kennedy, and Kennedy had asked me ‘to.

. A .
help him. ‘So I put my staff in the Pentagon

at taylor's disposal. “rnitially, in Kennedy's
presence, [I offered to put together a study

for ‘Taylor on resources in the United States
and among our alliesifor such things--not allies
as much as friends of ‘the United'States in many

countries--and this was done with eume CIA and

‘some of the military services and the intelli-

gence part of State. They had a little working

group) and we had severalsessions in my office
A ;


O'BRIEN: .

nt

LANSDALE:

O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

~38-

and put together some rough first papers ~

for Taylor to start his thinking for the

ce formed ;

president. Then when Taylor s*peeedrhis. group)

L : : . A.

I wasn't invited in on it,and = didn't attend. |
“A

Sure, WoO wonder Sc on got any insight. ....

weiisu 1t, right after the formation

of that group, and early--it was‘in May or June--
; ; pA

they dispatched some teams to go around Latin
America to survey the ability of various nations

to respond to Castro-type guerrilla activity.
Oe A :

1
a.

Yes, yes.’

Did you get involved in the planning of that

at all or any of the fallout of that?:--

Just peripherally on both. I forget the,,details

on that. ‘I had@ been worrying about places like
OF i ; . . .

Columbia and several other Latin American

countries close to the Panama Canal and had

urged that this be looked into, on some of the

A“ y
_ specific things that were being done there. I¥s bode
encouraged Has the Columbians start civic action
wo A

O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

-39-

‘in dealing with some of the dissident
areas and so on. All’ I had done was, not plan-
ning as much as coming in with sort of a

shopping list of what people might look for,

_ and individuals in these countries they might

talk to to. get information, on what was happening.
Well, are lyou in Colombia in the Kennedy
administration ‘at all as. . -

No.-No, the most I did was--1 went to venezusta
4j/A during the Kennedy administration, and Bolivia,

A
No, by that time folks were highly sensitive

about my showing up in “foreign countries-~

that is, Americans, not foreigners--and I really
A
wasn't permitted, or I was stopped really at
‘policy levels from going back into Vietnam or
the phitkippines J or anyplace in Asia. I begged

to be permitted £0 go down and take a look in

7
Latin America ,and Gilpatric wan the Cre Hot Pla we
A - 7 ths ‘Ateis im hod kacw wade.

BEGIN SIDE II TAPE I

O BRIEN:

outside of Verogula, oo. .

1
Bia you get to any other countres?
A


he Dele ee

. LANSDALE:

-0-
Well, Bolivia. ~ In Bolivia, I was interested

in particularly the Bolivian Air Force's

_ work of setting up a public school system

_ over in the eastern slopes of the Andes---

down in the jungles and in the very sparse |

settlements. They were really the one

governmental group that could get around

places. “they were very enthusiastically setting

up one-room school houses down there / and flying .

_in teachers and bringing some education in there, —
WAS _ A

which I thought was a great project, andjencouraging
Then, :

them. n finite I. was in Bolivia, I gotinvolved

with the resettlement of. indians from the
Altiplano over onto the eastern:slopes into
some new communities, in which the whole Bolivian

i A
government was involved,eté the U.S. Economic
af = .

Mission was working with them, and the

' Bolivian military was supporting it with trucks

Sonc-

and with, “people g going in. But, this was & very
exciting, agricultural-community-type of a
project of moving people out where they'd have
an economic chance at 1ite/ ana also a chance

to own land. It was changing the social


ol

structure considerably for they lowest class”
in Bolivia, and with the armed forces doing
it. This, again, jwas the very first visit.

In Veneavia, I had come up with some
ways of safeguarding our own interests in.
venezuliteLnich are not only oil production),
but we’ rave steel mills down there and a& “
number of things Zout I did this ag much for
the Venezuy{l an oatense Ministry as I did for.
the United States at the time. They were
concerned.

“O'BRIEN: ’ What are your relations with the people
. involved in the school in Panama’ which spreads

a lot of this entity gospel of civie action

among the military? Are your relations with
those people pretty good?
- LANSDALE: It was. They had picked up a lot of my
. , material from earlier times, in the form |
i ; Qe. ard. wonees Prat
. . of meémosizemd lectures, I had written on these
"subjects. Whiten they set up the school, I
"talked with them on the program of instruction

that they were going to p¥igz give. The first ~

adoption of any of these principles was in

O'BRIEN:

242+

Guatemala, and it worked very well there for.
ras

a time. The Latin Americans ‘became quite

enthusiastic, though again jealousies come in.
“A

They thought the Guatemalans were boasting ..

too much about it. sof when I was told that

‘\S , .
problem,I said, Well, get them to emulate and
fe

_ try ‘end ‘beat them and get ‘a healthy rivalry .

yl. -
going, which is what happened actually.

I suspect {Fulton] Freeman is there as ambass-

.  ador in Colnbi a when you! re there--no, Freeman

eet
LANSDALE:
O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:
O'BRIEN;
+ O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

was in Coltinbia.

. Yes, he was in sophie.

I can't think of the guy who was in Vonesutla
that was aéinbassador.

ve he was from. Arizona and was a journalist.
Not Citaucicn, Me Bernbain- LAvsDALE: No-
Well, how is he to deal with, and do you get

a chance to see [Romulo]: ‘Betancourt or any

of the political leaders?

Yes, I saw political leaders there.- I had
five days in Venezufta, and I think I got

AN
two hours’ sleep all the time.I was there. I
[C. Allan Ste wa: ail |

found our ambassador there,at the time very

gad HY geod bunk wi AO
open-minded, I wrote a report, coming back

_ “43+

from Venezupla afterward, and. submitted ityere
by the time I got to Washington. It went up
"to President Kennedy as well as ‘Dean J Rusk,
‘and some. of Rusk's staff immediately wired the
anbessadorgand 3: was one of ‘these/ "You don't
want to buy this, _ do you, " and ey said I'd-
come out’ with a report on Veneaufiie, and here
were the main points of my recommendations and
some findings. “He was just there five days. -
He couldn't possible have found out enough
to come to these conclusions, isn't that
right?” Bless his heart, the ambassador came .
7 back ‘and said,in effect, "I'm amazed that he
found out. that much, and the recommendations
“are sound, -and we'd discussed this before he
left, and we're working with them already.'

‘vou | don't have. to be in a place jong. »
For example ,_ we had a phopty large American
community down there who themselves were
. practically government}: U.S. Steel. and all .

our big oil companies and so on. There was

very little relationship between the American

O'BRIEN:

“you

-\b-

business community and the U.S. Embassyy cad |

I had urged that they meet maybe once a week

or once a month--the. American: executives and

the Ambassador and several members of his
staff,and have lunch together rather frequently
and discuss mutual problems because the U.S.”
firms dou there had very large security
starts). (they were very close to the police
type of forces, the constabulary ‘down therd<
and ; sind the embassy would be very. well inforned |

from this, as woll as passing some of thks

information back to these people; and everybody

nN
would gain by it. Well, this doesn't take

very long to. .. . In talking to the vice
jn che
president | of 08. Sie Steel operations - down there,

you'd an say, "One thing you would change if you
“haa the ‘power--what would it bef" and he'd
tell you something like this, yoi=tou, so,
ey it was rather easy to come up with ‘ens that

' thing.

Did you find them fairly knowledgeable and
enlightened about some of the things that you

were very » + «@

rn rT *

LANSDALE:

O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

of their (ompioyeose-not thet

-h5-

; _ Oo
Very much so, very much sop.——<

‘Like rural economic development, and agricul-

tural developmente—+Z

Particularly the oil companies, ana I was

' surprised. Standard [0il Company] of ow-verseyt

showed me what it was doing because the: rigs
out in Lake Maracaibo were getting blown up

and their pipelines were getting blow up-
vt ; ; “3

_ dy saboteurs coming in who were really expert.

I found out. later that they were affiliated
with communists in Coldinbi a and had come on

of
overs+ they were really experts at explosives,

and they weren't: the student type of revolu~

tionapies and so on, who also were present

Fi
in Venezuela. Buty in seeing what they were

doing, it went far beyond a.company paternalism

: They
type of a thing for employees thiet ,3¢ started

credit systems with farm groups and housing
projects for people living in the vicinity
sf employees sO

much,who also gained a great deal out of this.
aA | . : .

And then U.S. Steel, in pushing its developments

7 . . Alb
. . . —
| | (eater ? 2,
way down to the south. . . , He-probably \

wouldn't do“ity-he'a chew The tiniee an tne’

— ‘\
‘here. . . - a \
|

|
|

O'BRIEN: Oh my God._It!s.a wonder -he-hasn!t“elect?i=—
_ cuted. himsett.-={Leughter}-
LANSDALE: Yeah...._It!s not yours, ae =somo-of- ming .~

1 BRIEW: Wellj—Lln. not. worried ‘about. that. ~-Wires,-

these-sort-of-wirés’ “eanbé- replaced.” “I'n7 >

. 2

not sure. ebout 5 ‘yours.

LANSDALE: —" Worse“ tivan-rats.

nm Nour - .
_ 04BRIEN:———We115~ hes /8- spirited animal and se can’t” 7
Cee we
--help- ‘admiring: ‘that: ~ oe re
yen _———=
LAXSDALE? Yeah. 7 Well, one of the stories on Kennedy

I'd like to put in was! ou On my reports

from Vietnam in the very early days of -- just
before he was inaugurated, and he read it :
A .
apparently right after the inaugural--one of
- : the reports was a little side piece that I.
‘did'on a village in’ South Vietnam inhabited
by some Chinese refugees that: President
9°. Pann ; .
nh Diem had located down in the midst

of a communist~held territory, and I was very .

yr

impressed by then eA just as an example of
what, humans will do in such a situation, I'd

written it up and turned in a separate report

on iteFang ebout the 2... . It was still

January, '61, ‘about ten days ‘after the inaugural,
A

my telephone in the ‘Pentegon rangyand this —
ope “

“voice ‘that sounded like Praegigehs Kennedy's

told me it was President Kennedy talking, and
A
he had read this report of mine and wanted me
to have it published in the ‘Saturday Evening
ia at dhe fone ;
Post. I was wondering which joker in the-
 ¥, oo ams . .
Pentagon s-you=know, was imitating this
Harvard, Massachusetts aééent and was putting
$0 Ff. ;
me on, and I said, "Yes, yes, yes." I then
A : .
had my secretary check over at the White

House) and sure enough, it had been President

Kennedy, so I had to then go ahead ZT'a

promised to do 4) ea figuring out I didn't

know how to get Something in the Saturday
Evening Post, but quickly ‘found. out how, and

they published this thing afterwards as a
report that the President wanted published in

their magazine.

- -48-
ran
O'BRIEN: | welthet——— You had taken/-of course,
you'd had that interest in Vietnam and Laos. eee
You talked to a lot of people, as I under-
. stand, about Laos and Vietnam end the incoming
administration. _Did.you have eny intent or
: pylipose in mind outside of Just explaining
_ the way that it was?
LANSDALE: That was principally my intent. The first
| meeting I had with McNamara, all he wanted to:

+o oe oo:
do. was, have me tell him about Vietnam, and-this

was essentially what most of the incoming
- oO .

administrative officials;“when they'd talk:

. ‘oe , Ao-- ;
to me-2 would want me to explain what was

A

happening and wnat the situation was. This:
essentially was: ‘how and why ‘T felt on these
subjects, but my thesis right along on this

was to help the people in the countries to

+o
help themselves rather than,go in and do

amen ee ARIMA ah een Leena annem cate baal lacie

things for them. . It was mostly on the nuts”
and bolts pow how you go about doing this, and
the individuals you's: pick to do it, and how .
you'd select. them, ang please let's ‘have

highest quality and fewer people doing these

ee eres

Be.

O'BRIEN: -

LANSDALE: -

-h9-

things.
Well, you have some successes and failures
in--I guess mostly failures in the last of
the Eisenhower edninistrationg tim thinking -
in terms of Laos. Laos is the immediate

problem in 196l. How do you respond to some

of these people who are in policy-making.

_ positions at that time? I'd like to get

your feeling for thengpeople like (WaltBens]

Robertson-Zin the State "department =p03it
“A

pon Eonn and [J. Graham] Parsons: John Irwin

in wk Derense; and on? the Agency side, people

like [Desmond] Fitzgerald. How do they see. .

You have named a ‘group of people, all of whom

are friends of mine,and we were very friendly,
An A

and I had worked with a number of them for

enough years so that we more or less under-

stood each other and could take shortcuts in.

conversations and so on. All of those you

QMa?. in TAtIK
named. y ~and-teiked?w with me expressed

similar beliefs to mine) so it was very easy in
? A
talking to them, and there were others.in the

O'BRIEN:

-LANSDALE:

-50-

Eisenhower ‘administration. Now this wasn't

true throughout the administration at all,

but there. was a considerable group of people

“who 1 were in various executive slots just

down the second and third level who had been
through the . . . o Interruption]
Well, Laos,as I understand it,is,with the imp*-

on ey cn IS, a7
aid that's oon in there ,het4 t | really
does in. some ways tear up the economy of the.
country. Now, how do you. look on the’ ‘training -~

of the Laotian army in Late 360-2" 159, '60--

_some of the activities of the Agency in Laos,

as well as the army and through the PEO

[Programs Evaluation Office] office and things

: ts
like this? Is this the kind of thing ,you

envision in terms of--I hate to use the term

"nation building"--helping a country to help

- itself, in! helping. people to help themselves?

Yes, as long as in the modern world the leaders
of the country will think in terms of as large
a military establishment as they can afford

in a country. And they do this without any

advice from anybody. This is just a natural)
_- ; A


7e1-

self- preservation type of an impulse on their
part. Then my thought is: They will be doing
this. Then let's make the military establish-

ment serve the country in ‘a mach bigger. way -

. than merely toting guns round and guarding

borders. It's usually the organization that

is nationwide, and there might not be any
A
other organization that's nationwide in the.

country, such ag agricultures, e even the
administrative structure: that usually comes }

he.
under, department or ministry of the Interior’

; won't really have the manpower, the communi-

cations) end so forth, that the: military forces
A
do. "30, g given that, why not then get- the

military to start doing iconstructive things

around and making full use of the manpower

that you have anyhow. Have. them be good

military men as the very first requisite of

thee
this, but, given that athere! s still energy
OA Ong <4 ‘eh

and personnel involved in that who have & lot

A

of manzhours left over that could do other -
Ce .
things» and essentiallysthis is what I was

trying to get the American advisory missions

O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

- a AB Qe

to do--not only: the military advisory missions,
but when other egencies would get in and be

working on these. things, to themselves become

interested in the military doing such things, -
and aiding and abetting, including economics

projects and educational work and SO on. |

Well, in this Leotian deterioration that takes

A o-
place, yew=know the competing people there--
CF Nosavan ]
Phoumi Lvongbehity ¢ and Souvann Phouma and

-all--how do you read that in 1960 just prior.

an

to the administration coming in? . bo=yowe==.——

How do you see Phoumi; how do you see

Souvannah Phouma, as people? First of all;

have you met them ‘at any time © ——

Yes, yes, yes, I didn't know them well at all.
I'a met them a usually at formal gatherings
of one kind or another. The mein thing that

I saw in Laos in the way of political stability
actually stemmed out of the king of Laos dy this -
was the only unifying political force that.
existed there in the minds of all of the various |

Lao leaders whom I'd met. So when the others

started splitting and opposing one another, I

” -53-
ra oo
had. “already felt that our best bet was to
turn to ‘the king and force him _-or, not
force, but to encourage nimito ‘taking the
leadership role that would be the one thing
. acceptable to ali these leaders. “Instead of
that, we were starting to become pants—in= parfisom
ourselves: there and playing off one guy against
another, and Americans aren't good at that
game. We have many Americans wno think they
are, but this, I think, is a little too Pee fe ow neleg
err ye fell in love with the factions and.
a “ong 00 (i
; people, almost: unconscious of the fact that
“we were doing that. The paratroop leader |
there . . .-) _ :
O'BRIEN: fone Le?
LANSDALE:, us oat, who kicked over a revolt hea spent the
| night before his coup with a group of inerican
‘ . . friends, and there wasn't a damn one of them
| that knew that he was going to have a coup in
the morning. This type of a thing/ I just >
found inconceivable. People get nervous and

sort of absent-minded about what's happening

at the time when they're planning an action

O'BRIEN:

LAN DSALE :

_sh-

dike that the next morning, and somebody there
A

among the Americans should have been sensitive

enough to have seid, "Well, erent you feeling ~
“Lo vnows and .
well: or. something, youshnaws and had gotten

some | feeling on it. put / this. sort of getting

| in bed with people socially and saying, "He's

Oi Lie alk righ,” u
a good. feliow,, end ‘he's my friend, and excusing

everything is a common blindness, and this had
; A
worried me in Laos quite a bit.
a

‘Well, I get the impression from reading of

this, perioa/ that there really is some lack. .j
of coordination in the various efforts that

are there—-eAotherords, the ambassador is

' not completely privy to what the Agency is

doing, ana the Agency is not completely privy
to what DOD is doing through the PEO office.

"Do you get that feeling? Maybe in regard

. : Loshn Foy
to the Parsons-Irwin-Reilly mission that

goes out there, do. you get any feeling over Husk

at all?

Yes, I'm trying to recall. ... We hit a

crisis at that point, and the group that went.

out--Parsons was on home leave, and we had a
A .

-55-

meeting in the Pentegon in the secretary of

nd ) o
Defenges office,and there were a mob of
Ave

=<. There were /-I can't.

people theres
quite, recall now what prompted the meeting »
but red was a crisis of some sort in Laos. .
And the JCS gave a briefing, that's right, as
' part ‘of: the ‘hing, and it was on the Pathet Lao
"posi tioning ang they suddenly discovered tet
there were passes over the mountains that

had some importance to the Ho Chi Minh trail,
and this great discovery was being lectured
on at this meeting. ¥ gad at the time, the
Secretary of Defense--I ae eng think, I wonder,
‘that mi ght have been [Thomas]. ‘Gates Lin] at

x

the time—might have been, but whoever it was-—

“A .

asked if I had a comment to make)and I said,
oh.
a
showing us of Pathet Lao and the other ‘situa!

. . A
“Take a look at that map that the JCS was

tions on the thing} and I said, "it should
2 =
tell everybody here just one thing. You've

Sis .
got an ambassador who ,on home leave heres?

he doesn't belong neretthe belongs out in
. A
Vientians right this noment, axa the rest of


A aes Site haetat nian! a wees an

O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

O'BRIEN:

And—the~a~

-56-

you who are asking questions ought” to have

‘people out there with him who would tell you

immediately and take a. first- hand look."
Ce
I remember Irwin, was picked

: he
right on the spot to go immedi ately, end, said

to me on the side, "You and your big mouths,

oo

yominown {Laughter]

Well, did you get involved in any of the

meetings on Laos-after. the Kennedy adminis-

tration comes in, and some of the jockeying

that goes. around?

Some of them, yes. I can't quite recall
which meetings they were at the time. JI was

in on some of the questions of the support of

Mesos.
the Neo the guerrilla forces.

Well, how MF aia you see in. terms of a strategy
Aw

for ‘the area?  mrorete-. By as I read it, there
That are

seems to be some various strategies, proposed;

one is a;syoueknon, going down the full road

behind Phoumi and supporting Phoumi, and

another is the panhandle strategy--I've never:

been able to quite understand what the pan-

if Qe
handle svurategy was~-that yousnou, rings

-ST-

|
| a bell.
| _ LANSDALE: | Ham yeahove lly ham, my memory isn't too
. good on this thing. - There was some talk
at the tine }-there' 's high country across
theBolovens Plateau and so forth down in the
south, and there was talk at the time ,of
that. _being the dominant area, and what we
"should dojvas to make use. of that. and the
high ground in Vietnam and so on, across
into Thailand, and ensure that that state staph
a in noncommunist hands. ,
_ a O'BRIEN: : Well, there! 8 also suggested in the Laotian
: i crisis as early as 1961, the use of strategic
' bombing on supply weyes even,as I

a)

understand it, to Hanoi, as early as that,
and | ingerdieting a A

A= SCE some of. the supply lines, -as

_well as the suggestion; that subsequently in
1962 does become a reality) the dropping

of the ‘SEATO [Southeast Asia Treaty Organi zation]

"plan five as I understand it,. How aia you

. - ‘feel about the Laotian crisis at that point,
in terms of a strategy or a direction et. which

! . should work?

o.


LANSDALE:

-58-

Well, I had wanted the Laotians to defend

I”

their, country, and I’was all for the work

A
- Meos [ors
with the ‘Maoists and so on of: doing it.

Once. it left that and started involving =

Vietnamese or uS, on bombing or anything

| else, I felt that the cost of saving some

real estate would be too high to ever engage
avi olor worko
in;,) And on the bombing, I felt that: as long

pects 0

as you had all of the , communication with the

people theake in the hands of communist leaders

‘such as in North Vietnam and then Hanoi where

this was pushing, that anything overt such

as aerial ‘bombing that would then permit them
to use that as a unifying force psychologically |
with . the people would be dead wrong As used

to remind them of what {Winston] Churchill had

‘done 4 (ith the German bombing of Britain,

A

“cust on radio with the peoples and here were

leaders with complete access to radio and

working with the people)and it would have a
vay .

reverse effect. as far as trying to stop the

ambitions and aims and so forth of ‘the North

Vietnamese, who after all, the guys organizing

LA


-59-

the Pathet: Lao end pushing on into the area.
me: felt that more could be done with the
armed forces of Laos themselves in making ~
them more able to stend up for themselves -
-and defend their country. But if it couldn't).
I couldn't see an intervention of any sort a
in there. Morally, we'd have been on a moral.
ground then to turn around and start using
some, international moral pressure through the
_ press and so forth, to sort of shame’ the. North |
‘Vietnamese out of ‘their attempts. I'm a
great believer in exposing things to bring
‘such pressure. . .
O'BRIEN: Well, how do you see the relationship of Vietnam.
. and Laos at that point, or do you? . |
LANSDALE:. Oh, yes. The passes and the HoChi Minh trail
in bringing things down was one of the hey
-things on this. But again, there. was even
talk at the time of taking Vietnemese troops

&

in there, efa-—secretly;and using them up

“A
to try and Stop that, and I was opposed to
that], I didn't want to see intervention like

that from the outside.


-60-.

Well, when does some of the covert activity,
injterms of. the use of some of the: Montag rords |

yands- in interdicting those supply lines in
Q-
Laos ,2yout=kbouw, from Vietnam, start? Is that
“A .
‘going on in the late Eisenhower acministration,
: “A

or does it begin in the Kennedy administration?
I think it was the Kennedy administrations”
there had been a little of ityor there.had

been talk of itjin the Eisenhower administration.
“A .

There had been thoughts along that line by.

‘the top Vietnamese “reacers-Lisss/ sglend 1
“remember President Diem! 8 brother, went tox .
vA A in

his older brother went into Laos pax about

'SS or maybe’ '56yand had come up with a scheme
very similar to “that at the time. He had
talked about ‘the mountain people of ‘Laos
being ekin to. “the mountain 3 people of Vietnam ,
and wouldn't: it be good to get some of our .
mountain people in with them ,and ‘together

A
they could be trained.

_ O'BRIEN: Yes, well,-you're in Vietnam in the middle
‘of the fifties,and then you go back’ in 1960
A

in- the late Eisenhower administration. What's


on Senkemtn,

AAA ett ae ao eh eee ntl So ceTmanbaae a enema hd ete A cette erenbiae 1 Me th dinette ie aba A anise Me hn tented whee ase

er

LANSDALE:
O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

~61-—

changed, or has anything?
Oh, a great deal. Excuse me. _ [Interruption]

What changes do you. find?

Well, the main change was in a growing isola- \ >
tion from reality of the constituency of the { ’
president of Vietnamg a repression of, you :
might say,a loyal opposition ora noncommunist .

nN
aN
opposition to free? in political terms a” “There wen

professionally some among the military that

wee - ed as
Twas’ taking the Vietnamese military apart from

their people more than it had been when I had

left, because I-had gotten them working very

. 4 the g< fF fe orn oI . ae
closely with a number. of aterreeon- projects
he .

and a growing isolation of the American ’

embassy in particulary but including some of
; A '
the American agencies, from the Vietnamese
A ae
officialdom, and taking a very strange form

of concentrating on gossip essentially--gossip
as

as much as #act--about, sh-—sdhatsthe-heliis-

the word - Limctiyinst _think-of,-e€ = misdeeds


Seth ch em word diet” Pema sled 9 esate ne

:
3
3
5
g

tr

~62-

jabs
ana so forth by, public officials or

people connected with the regime in Vietnam @

‘so that the information gathering process

of the United States there was devoting an

exorbitant amount of time on sort of nitpicking
. Ly te, a : ar at ,
on the people that were in power. | fhe rela-

“

tionships, such as the ambassador with the
“a .

president of the country, -the ambassador

A
Ke

would go into details of malf2x6ance in office
and so forth, or mishandling of funds by the

Vietnamese on an internal matter, and the

president would have to correct him and say,

A.
y .
\you don't have all the facts, and the ambass- .__ |
, IN . A yi: ; : .
ador would say, ves) I do) too. This. to me

: A A
was very poor. I felt that we had some

; ie) ;
Americans erat were close enough to the top
officials of the Vietnamese(who weren't
, A

present in the country always), who should
. : “A

be brought there and told, "Look, we under-

stand these guys are doing something wrong.

‘since they don't understand us that well)

~63-

Can you go in and get-them to start doing

things right,as a friend of theirs?" rather
ro errse Be

ye sae _ -
than going and try'ing to scold them and

‘something and getting the backs up of people, .

and they'd figure, "Well, these damn nosey
oe AN. A . .

Americans-only got half the facts, and

A

the hell with them. We aren't going to

do what they wantg" “I just felt that we

weren't playing a very wise ballgame there

vt
at the time, on the American side. Cf also

‘felt that Diem was paying too much attention

-to similar types of his own’ people, his

fwtuawy Oe _
intelligence people, who, were ceLrostuamay telling
“ ile:

him what the Americans were doing too damn
much, or were bringing in alarming news about
his own subjects--and particularly political

oppositionists--and)I- suspect) manufacturing
. “A “A

‘Cases against them so that they could take

act lonsgaird he,in turn) was getting too much
" Sa No


~64-

secondhand from people) and this tended to
- A i

isolate him more) Since his main intelli-
; ; ;

gence officer was his brother, [Ngo Dinh] Nhu ,
. a . “A

A. ;
who was’ an ambitious person,too, I felt that

it was a poor arrangement'on the Vietnamese
side. -I personally urged Diem at the time

to get in’ touch with some of his opposition,—
A

ankwat which point he asked me where I had |

been at certain times of the day during my
visit thetes and I said, I was talking to
your, opposition, and I'm not going to tell
you who it was ox where I was, but just the
mere fact that you know that shows that you -
were having me trailed aroundgard you know
I'm a friend of your country's,and I'm |
ae A

trying to help all of you succeed here, and -
you happen to be the elected leader, and you

; val
jolly well better start reflecting what your

: ; i$ .
people desires a if you™@ spend your time

and money and efforts and so forth ‘watching

wa

O BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

me

~65-.

a guy like me, I'm sure you're doing. a lot

. ; Hy
more for someone else you really suspect) —-

Co— -
. afnd=—

How would he react to something like this?

-Listen, I was told by a number of people

that Iwas about the only one’ that really’

~ :

ever talked to him in this manner, and-he
would listeno ard at the time, one of the

people most critical of him was his vice-~

- president, and I went over and saw the vice~

president, whose name was [Nguyen Ngoc} Tho,
and Tho immediately started ;telling me that
the president had spies all over’ his office
and in his staffpand as he was telling me
this, one of the clerks was serving us tea,

. \ . : . ;
and I said, ‘Is this guy one of the president's

, p
spies?’ana he said, “Probably, I think so."

[Laughter] Maybe he'll go-back and report

ton)
this one. I said, When was the last time

you two talked to each other?” Well,it had

~64-

secondhand from people) and this tended to_
. 7 nN .

., : . , . /. - + 7 , .
isolate him'more) Since his main intelli-

aA.

gence officer was his brother, [Ngo Dinh] Nhu,’

. a .
who was'an ambitious person,too. I felt that

it was a poor arrangement'on the Vietnamese

side. -I personally urged Diem at the time

‘to get in’ touch with. some of his’ opposition,
A

ank—at which point he asked me where I had |

been at certain times of the day during my

. 4 7
visit theres and I said, I was talking to.

your opposition and I'm not going to tell
you who it was or where I was, but just the

mere fact that you know that shows that -you -

‘were having me trailed aroundgar€ you know

I'm a friend of your country's,and I'm
trying to help all of you succeed here, and.
you happen to be the elected leader, and you:
. . . ; “A .
jolly well better start reflecting what your.
people desire,» wa it you ™& spend your time

and money and efforts and: so forth watching

O BRIEN:

LANSDALE: -

-65-

a guy like me, I'm sure. you're doing. a lot

. oe 4
more for Someone else you really suspecty

oC
' afta

How would he react to something like this?

Listen, I was told by a number of people —

that I was about the only one that really:

ever talked to him in this manner, and he
would listeng and at the time, one of the

people most critical of him was his vice-

“president, and I went over and saw the vicew

president, whose name was [Nguyen Ngoc} Tho,
and Tho immediately started telling me that
the president had Spies all over his office
and in his staffyand as he was telling me
this, one of the clerks was serving us tea,

A : ; .
and I said, ‘Is this guy one of the president's

spies?’ and he said, “Probably, .I ‘think so."

[Laughter] Maybe he'll go back and report

oho)
this one. I said, When was the last time

you two talked to each other?” Well, it had |
oS A

. ps

“and call him over here your first free time,

don't know what your own police are doing)

' -66-

q “na
been months» so I, back to Diem, and I jumped
A

himg I said; ‘Vou've got a vice-president

who you ‘ve made responsible for all the

economic development of the - country, and I
. OM
know that you consider that very importante.

You -haven't talked to him for a long time,”
° ; . he'd “A
and I forced him to tell me when , ud done
it lastgso I said, Well, pick up the telephone
. A
and you sit down and have a long talk with ©
y ‘ - . . ;
himp. So he did itq He picked up.the phone)
- : roar
and T got the two of them together againg
He was really out of touch® He promised me

at the time to get in touch with some of tre Abe

political oppositiong he swore up_ and down
“yell, .

? :
he wasn't. oppressing anyoneég and ‘I said, You

“A
“u

‘then, and-I gave him the list of names of

A

’ people who were in prisoné, who had been arrested’

A

at midnight and: pulled out of their homes and

OTS AE”

2 ae te ne ees ae a RR RR ee delet A Ane Aft dee he whens ger

eo BRIEN:

_ LANSDALE:.

Nhu o ,
intelligence knew © - -6

-67-—

"SO OMg and he promised. to look into their

cases immediately and do something about

. So \ . -

1tg And I said, I've gotten this from.
re

people who,in the opposition to you) but :I
wacther ae “A .

co nen )
don't know 3<€7you 've, gotten any reports.
: on . .

He said he'd never heard of these cases,

and I think he was telling the truth. He

had no reason to dissemble with me at all.

on these things.

Well,why is this? Is it the development of
“2 we i nonin

an independent bureaucracy,.or is tnexe—a

degree of U.S. influence on, let's say)the
: i A

dA
There was probably some. . .:. I think by

“that time the Vietnamese intelligence was

way beyond any control by U.S.. intelligence,
A

who initially had been helping it, and Diem's

"Bother Nhu was really--really had the bit in

his teeth and was his own'man. And I suspect,
A

initially, he was really trying to serve his

. . :
wee ee eg ee en ee ee AT tates eames iNet tn arabe Geen beiliamlie IR DANVAES no ty poe cet) 0: OE nie baat

O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

-65- -

brother, and he was doing it by trying ‘to
A hes
get the goods on. everybody working for his
brother throughout, the government and anybody
opposed to his’ brother, and the intelligence
people, picking it up )discoverea that if
uA rAN ;
they brought in bad news about some guy that
the brother didn't like, he'd pay them and
believe it. So I'm sure that there was
3 lot of manufactured evidence in the
intelligence take that was coming ing ard

I don't think the Americans were screening

‘any of that type of information because it .-

went right into the palace,and there was a
A

big” room behind the president's office that ~

had many files and was the main 1 personner 7

dossier type of file place.

Well, you're critical of the MAAG [Military

Assistance Advisory croup] operation there.

| folie?
What's wrong with it) in the late Soba

; ; A
Well, I felt that MBAG under “hanging” Sam

ptt
[Samue T. 7 Williams in the late “Sos was

-69-

anfunusually well-run American military
4 . ;

. Operation. There were some unusual things

being done that made it so. One of. them’
was one of the best ideas I've ever bumped
into. “General Willians brought over the

chief of staff of the Vietnamese army

whenever .the American advisors, who at that.

A

. a oe
time were out in the countryside, but =
. “A

o Soa a :

we at fairly high levei.s)and were running
A, -
training camps more than advising on opera-
: a

‘tions or anything #-#ut. when they would come

in once a month for a weekend in Saigon,

Williams would get the Vietnamese Chief of

- Staft to come in and talk to them. The

Vietnamese Ghief of Staff at that time was
General [Tran van] Don. Don was quite
diplomatic, but had a way of being candia in
his remarks and not having them hurt too much.

: hames aan
“when they were told. He would leave out, so

‘on, but he would tell these Americans what

O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

~70-

their Vietnamese counterparts in the Viet-

namese army and so forth thought of them and

: . “A
their work)and their advice, andthe reactions
| . So | os
throughout the armed forces to them This

‘was the one part of the monthly gatherings ©

with Americans around that everybody would

stop dozing off or thinking of something else
and would sit up and. pay attention because

they were the subject of the talk,of course.

. ; A

This was a very healthy thing...
see where.’

yes, I can feel it FX weld bee

“A

t,o. sSause even though it was tough diplo-

oe
; matically, the most sordid truth, wotd— the

~tdto
hardest factg@woula come out in, (phere

; And then Williams himself had been in

- Vietnam a long enough time by then--I forget

how:long; it may be three years at the time,
A .

four years--so that when he moved around the

Vietnamese army, it wasn't only just the top

staf ££ officers ana commanders who would be

. . ft odie
with him, but I noticed in a visit ,there--I

-71-

think it was "59--that sergeants and junior

lieutenants and so’on would come up and taik

y
to himg and I'd moved in close enough to

eavesdrop on some of the conversations,and |
nr Ae

these were personal problems, family problems, -

and financial problems and so forth that

individuals hadgarid this was a very unusual

\

relationship. for an American to have. And

. since. the American was also running our

frend hous

advisory effort too, I Just figured that this

—

constant feeding and contact with the echelons

A

of Vietnamese military that were down below -:
+

the big wheels was again a very healthy

_influence that was constantly at work with

him. ‘So that he would know very well what
was going on in.places.: Some of these problems-~

personal problems-~would actually involve the

Military work that was going forward, people

griping that something was wrong and so ony.

at they were doing this out of a friendship)

ae ner Bel etn lt andes SN.

want eee eee eae eet amen es a ee ee,

O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

‘O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

-72-

and nekas not to tell.on their bosses or

anything, but usually personal worries and

concern that WagPase or ‘something going

ay. a ; .,
wrong would @ffect them. Later they moved
in an educdtor--a military educator--{Paul -D.]
Harkins, and. . -@
Well, [Lt. Gen. Lionel-c.] McGarr comes in.
there before that, doesn't he?

McGarr, It was McGarr, yes, you're right.

it was before Harkins. McGarr. And McGarr.

built.up a staff to work on counter “insurgency

and probably put together the best staff
Hat . :

studies on counter- insurgency han any
; /

American military men have ever done.
Is that right?
He got American military men who had ‘been

guerrilla leaders in the Philippines, for

. example) in World War II),)and in Burma and so

A A
on),and in Europe, and s«*itched most of his
A . oS

work over into compiling “How to Do it”

manuals, but I've never seen thé finished

oe ta A i lA ca A oy ns BN a inch mtd os

~73-

products. I saw them working on it at the
_ time, and all I know is they had tremendous
stacks of papers with the results of their
typed-out work’ and were putting it together.
: a ; eS
and the interpretation of this “&S. apparently, “*~
to: start’ increasing staff and American military
; a aS :
personnel to ‘handle whatever wastever was
coming up out of this whole process. The
; _ | .
feeling was we that there shoulda be closer
American Supervision of what was happening
units, ;
out .in Bunks which meant geutEt you'd put
down your’ Americans at lower echelons and
‘then get a separate reporting system on back ,

: So . : ™~N
feeding in the research process of the Americans
initially more than anything else. “It wasn't
for control; ‘it was just for information that
would go into fields of studygard this eka fad

Anvertean :
to a proliferation of anmilitary presence
that was intended sort of for the education
of Americans)I think) more than anything else,

: A “A : “A
but of course didn't work out that way. You

|
|

ave hae

neice ewes eS re

O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

. : . : Woe.
_they couldn't help but tell a guy, Well, ,if

-74-

put some red-blooded American boys in uniform

out someplace)and they're going to start doing
. A a .

other things as well. In collecting information)

bok) A

you didn't do it this way and did it the other

4 ce y
_ way, it would work better, and so on. re was

a very human. thing that started workings ana

as this happened )we started building up our
~ uo A
advisory effort more and more.

‘Well,in the meantime, while this is going on,

A A
. . t
the insurgency's building up, isn't it?
Yes. .
Just what is the condition of the country-

side that's different from when you're there

in the middle f$fties «sede and when you go

a
y an enemy )which

ral

Ce

back in tatu 190.2: .
; vay

> 5S

Oh, there were guerrilla
there hadn't been in the period from Geneva
on up to the time I left in the end of ‘56@

You could drive roads at night and so forth

ae ee er

-75~-

and not be worrying about guerrillas. There
were isolated incidents of violence, but.

they were very minor--it would be about
oo . . wilh, tae
what you'd expect in any country, crime rate

| ee
goin athe fact that former VietBSnh: guerrillas

were the guys pulling the trigger didn't
matter too much as far as the overall crime

rate went. It was in a nature of minor
Hed
terrorism,was going on. By my next visits
. so, cprlecy
later in the Ate Sy there were areas of
5 : .
guerrilla bands at work,with roads that were
: A

areas that were unsafe,

7 a
unsafe and-so on) A
\
. A

A 4

with great-problems of police posts being

“attacked and with their families being wiped_

out in small massacre type of things, though
the type and degree of violence had increased’

F

a. great deal... By the end of ‘'60--when I got -

od & to . ; .
there yn Christmas of '60--there were fair-
size enemy, Vietcong units operating and

oO mo,
dominating areas}, it had escalated considerably

by then. | os

-76-

O'BRIEN: Is this terrorism campaign on the local
officials as serious as some of the people
: oe

have written? abou tat?

LANSDALE: Oh) yes.
A

O'BRIEN: Do you ever get an ) feeling about the
“number of people? “I! ‘ve heard ‘all kinds
of estimates: |
LANSDALE: No, I've got [Stephen -T. } Hosmer's study
there: on fot , and, I haven't read it yet.
I just got that. from him. r imagine he's
got ‘a figure ‘in. there. The last figure. L

arounre
I remember ‘on it was--in about 66 weromctaoet

A 08 eae

ox something - 8 og
O'BRIEN: Forty thousand. That many?
LANSDALE: Yes. These were officials not. theix families
2
er anything. But these were village officials”
and district officials) ana sort of federal
-government officials,
- © BRIEN: Well,what do you see happening as a result of this

“A the: ability op

in terms of, Diem bo just simply govern in. those

hi Lo abicty Y .
. years? Is the-vals Y 4:0 govern deteriorating?

LANSDALE:

: Mes

- problems. He had.been shot at several.times,

-77-

Yes: In some ways it was. Initially, he

was oni Lig to delegate any authority
4 wl

at all”and he haa the tendency to try and

“A

do everything himself. If the problem

came up in agriculture, he would ‘be the
guy ‘to, do all the paper. work and the deciding
rather than his Minister of Agriculture and

so on. He had gotten over that to a very

' large extent .laterg so he had learned to be

more the administrator and executive later

on,as far as putting some authority in the
, ; ; ,
hands of others. But at the same time, he

also seemed to have lost some of his critical

yi

faculty, & ‘some of the things that were going

wrong,- of not being able to see it: He was

getting around the country and visiting) but
A

not as much anymore because of the security

A
so that he had a larger and larger security ©

guard around him all the time)which meant
; so, A ,
that when he went in and talked to veople,


-~78-

‘they were very much aware of plain_clothes
policemen, secret service types, all around :
him, and others)that were screening out
A . 7
peoples so that the dialogue between the

president and the people became thinner and

thinner, and less and less meaningful. So
CA
while he. was. on paper becoming a better

executive, hé was, in terms of being the
A

. ao- . . . . .
national leader, w= being less ‘effective all
. A . :
the time because he had no means of measuring

what was true and what wasn'tf, what was
. . - A
: : wou Oe
worth doing and wasn't, and what wes work
wrt lt®, |
and what wasn ee It was a considerable

A.
impairment of his critical faculty. This
was one of the reasons I was urging him to

start. dialogues with his political ‘opposition=
jast A
even if it started at opposite poles and,led
a-
to tremendous emotional clashegpthét there
would be some means for dialogue to take

place that would have been useful to hin,

particularly if he had: invited them into a

-79-

‘meal or something)and had some way of -.
scald “A

das pe 2
. qiaetening the most emotional irritations

out oe
that would take place just how-tine’ people

7
bec ws
seened- polite at the timeg so the content
pubd las:
of what they, nad’ to Say would be something
. ra at
that he: wasn't gettingyelsewise.
O'BRIEN: Yes, well, as I understand it, the vies (viet
A
Cong} make-a great deal (of headway in those
years on the basis of ‘the land system.
LANSDALE: That was one of them.
O'BRIEN: Well;what. . . . As I understand it)there's
; A ; : ; “A
_some rub between the U.S. in this regard
and Diem about putting through some land
reform which would cure some of the rural
‘ cultural problems that the French had sort
of created, as I understand, from youcknew

the Vietnamese moving into the country. . .@

LANSDALE: “Yes, yes...

O'BRIEN: Well, how do you see that? Are you pushing Aim
oe y ,
for this sort of thing?at ot polit 2
ie hod - .
a Oe OR
LANSDALE: Yes. Actually,we-tave some very sound land

A;


-80-

reform measures on the books and had issued
decrees on them that were good. As usual,
the di fegculty Z, when you get a piece of

; A ; . ,
legislation ox sonethingytis then implementing

A
it correctly) ana I was pushing him: mostly on

implementing his neasures. Tow ‘the land
. Of
reform worke® that Diem approved and used

— 1 sk
as the basis for his cecrees came from Wolf lade” ¢

¢

a
and Wolf, was, when he left U.S. employment,

was agtoally enployed by Diem as his advisor on.
ASE susiect, and Wolf was getting over and
' having breakfast with Diem quite a bit.
Wolf isa very articulate, personable type
of a guy) and there was a great deal of.
. A.
affectionate friendship between the two mena
(8° that Wolf, who is a champion of reforms
and of helping the man on the land, had full
access to this guy and had a way of doing
things. tana I felt that the main thing.that

‘needed doing was demonstrating to President

Diem, who was sympathetic towards this, of where’
A ;

-8)-

things weren't going right and changing some.
. : . th, Se . , .
of the inner workings of t#e“thing)instead
A A

; v oo, ;
of just falting him on intent. And his

“intent was very sound, very good. I think

he was ignorant of some of these things |
; F ;
going. wrong. "r felt that we should have

bornejdown on the matters in which he was

‘ignorant and tried to get some changes there

-' and make these things work, because certainly

“A

landlords and others were circumventing

the law of the land that Diem thought ‘was
operatingyor when he circumvented it, he
was doing it for good reasons of his own,
A
which was again open to education by somebody
of hime but he was moving in people whom he .
could trust--who were refugees--into farm
communities and distributing land to them
for security reasons and political reasons

and so on, and then dictating what they

would grow and so ongAcause he'd just figure,
. A

Well,: in the national economy ,we need this

“A


ee eee ee te eR Ro Ret en ae nanoee ea coronene nen etn dasamsa nathan AD i. hPL cb UE la Ay et ene lm Rat ts nln 8

at

O'BRIEN:

O'BRIEN:: -

LANSDALE:

TAPE II SIDE

LANSDALE:

‘though, doesn't it?

" =82-

. type of fiber grown or this type of crop or

something,and the land will produce it up

‘
there, and so they should do that. sof he
A sort of
was only circumventing: ‘tthe lawafor the

greater good, in his own mind, Z nis own |

extent. vo 8

This centralization brings about a reaction, °

A

. Yes. . : ou

I
You asked about the falling out between

Ladejinsky and Diem. I know there was
- just.

something of that nature, but, what it

consisted of, or why, I don't know. I

remember that the American ambassador . 7.

hit _ - .
*Et ,would have been [Elbridge] Durbrow?

LANSDALE: _.. Durbrow-— ~~ was mindful of the fact that

A

‘ :
~- a

Lede} gnsky was having breakfast with Diem

and. was close to ‘him, and,in a. “rather general
pad aaked Lodajinsky . A Y.
way, to bring up thoughts of corruption§s in
A

Pe ei: ele tae ee etre

STEUER a oe ae eee 2 ee eee RR oe Neel ee A inn, RY allt Rallabtateir tales Sante namie fi eine ase =

we

Lo -23-

the government ana subjects beyond anything
like land reform. And I suspect that
Ladejinsky had started getting very political
in his talk)as a result of thisywith Diem,

A

; . Ff.
and that Diem had resented it. But beyond...

this, there was a very deep affection between

_ the two. When I was there in .‘59 or '60, ©

Ladejinsky had wanted to go someplaceand
. . “A .
‘I forget where it was. .... I know one

of the places was Indonesia, but there was
A

another country he wanted to go to),and Diem
; ; a 7, had-
hadn't wanted him to go/ and ke*suggested
A.
that he attend a conference--I think in
woe O- oo
Latin Americas mova finally, they had agreed

between the two of them, and r44e4insky had
ron he

gone on to -do these other thingsottet, taken
sort of a sabbatical leave to do that. * But
this was a very personal thing between two -
men, and it was two friends/ rather than a

ray
president and his consultant working. I

know Legejinsky is very sentimental about


we

O'BRIEN:

-84-

‘Diem aS a man, and I know that Diem recipro-

cated this very much. There was a point

where the rational thought would’ end, and.
; RO

the feelings of affection and so forth

; t

would come over, and say, Well, even if that
A. a

is true and everything, I still like the.

y
-guy, and,want to help him, and so ong and

A A )
this existed between the two. sof they

might have differed ‘on some things and perhaps :

on carrying out land reform exactly the way- fot

. Wolf ‘wanted, but the two men kept seeing

each other all the time, and he had ample

A
opportunity to work on that.
a) that's

ae ; ‘
Wekizest the - suggestion sit made sometimes is

that the Vietnamese military hag not been.
trained for the kind of war and the kind
of insurgency that they did encounter in
1960-611: ney had not been properly trained

for that before. Is there any validity

“in this at all?

a a  #

-85-

par 2
J

LANSDALE: ..Oh yes), They were being trained actually: to

meet the challenge that the Vietnamese and

| American top officials foresaw, and they were
‘thinking thebthi-e--and incidentally, the
French General [Paul] Ely before he left. was
thinking the same way--.just in terms of
contigency. plannings they saw a lot of artil-
lery. and armor being given the North Vietnamese
army.- So, vetng given that information, they
Saw any attack or military trouble in Vietnam
as consisting of divisions of North Vietnamese
with a lot of artillery and armor coming | |
across the border. So they built up an army

to meet the foreseeable thing that was happenings,

reine ee tar NL amen a 2 Senta aa an eNO Nt As Pah Kain Dick BELL At ellatrenn Be Ets wim berm Ln

that they thought might happen. ” Instead of

this, of course, it was more of the same old
A.

‘story. agaings ok there were many of the officers

a .
Ge vite etede he,

in the Vietnamese armed forces who haa formerly
been guerrillas themselves, who had formerly
had been Viet Me in the old: days of fighting
the French, who had broken with the gommunists
“and wanted no part of the. Gommunists and were

very sincere, patriotic Nationalists. But

‘high school and so on.

at fairly junior grades, and’ in the late-

x
=By-
since “they had had e259 this former affiliation

wet LA

and had teken their basic military training

with the enemy, so to speak, they never quite

. had the same stature among their fellow

officers in the Vietnamese army, for example,

A.
as greduates of the Vietnamese Military
Academy afid the others’ coming right out of
rar

So as a result, the

officers corps who were Imowledgeable ENGR

'-of how to counter what was happening were kept

A

‘the highest any of them Bor that I ever knew

dhe
about was ,rank of Majors awd they had to take
orders from Colonels ‘and so forth who had
served under the French in very much the

same type of a conventional military organi-_

‘gation as the Americans had put up and were

advocating. And these junior types who wanted

to do different things were simply too junior

to do it and were unable to convince anyone

A ;
‘of the need. The initial meeting of the threot:

mort --.
was thought, to be a police problem than an

army problem, and there wes a lot of work

-87-

on trying to equip and train the national

police to cope with its en ye Americans -
did that through our economic mission and

. through, Michigan State University had a .
group helping on administration there. They
recruited some very ‘good police officials ‘from
the U: S. who were quite used to dealing with

" urban crime problems in the U. s. Mye1l, you.
can't take a man who is very good at precinct
work in Detroit, Michigan or Bifninghan, Alabema ) —

4

; _ or something, and move him’ out tio an Asian
mee a . A
country where his problem is : What do you do

“A

when a company of guerrillas comes in end
“ambushes yourlpolice: station? A completely

foreign type of a thingy s So that we had
. who
police ecvisors ff “eS were insisting on all
A

‘policemen being armeted with nothing more

i . ; 7 than, saya 38-caliber revolver, with the

: a : . poricemen saying, veaais but people are
shooting at us with rifles, and we need rifles
or something like that to shoot back at then,

or how about sub-machine guns or some--we

neec «sre fire power." Well, it was foreign

O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

-88-

, A .
to them. So there was a mixup on a number of

things on this coping with the insurgency ©

‘that was growing—not' only the conventional
g 8} ¥.

A
_formation of the Vietnamese army but of a

conventional urban police formation of the

police.’ and yet, throughout the syatent there,

‘there were many individuals who knew better,

and who knew how to’ cope with it, and who

were continually begging, "Give us a chance

“to do it some other way."

“Well, in terms of these people we were talking

about a little earlier--the late Eisenhower
people, like Pitzgerala/ and tewin J and Parsons--
Bo they conceive of the kind of insurgency ,
at tet parr’)
that's developing in South Vietnam, ‘or are
they rr) . .
Fairly well. Feirly well. They were more
aware of, or had more understanding of, the |
needs than did some of the folks that. were
coming in sort of brand new to the problem
‘or who had been steeped in a far more
conventional approach to the problemas were

some of our military leaders at the time.

But, as I remerked earlier, these were personal

ry

"AN

1B

of
19

TIEN:

LANSDALE:

mek

: How long. is the’ manusextpt

_89-

friends of mine, and when I'd talk to them and

“A .
tell them my views, there wes always sympathy

for them)so I might have mistaken: that for
A
understanding and so ong avd even t that was

rare enough so that I. felt that, Lantersuption] 7”

o-

Ho ho. I went through first,/-the publishers

wanted me to tell ally snp thezwords, just .

write as much as TIT could for later “edi tings
ALY
and, said this is the way people ao it. So
Paks

-I wound up with really three of seneeiiy long

books, and ‘since I was writing one not too
. A -
long book, why I wound up with a tremendously

. x oy taem
long manuscript. | fnd, urged shen that I could
weiwulde  -
cut.it down to two books) and, publish it as
A

- two different things, and the sub ject matter

“would have permitted me. They still want

just one book, ‘so I am now. going back with

editor's Pare and with my own notes and trying
hn
to. .. FG started off initially with a

eutcanccyente job, but I discovered I couldn't
do that and retain the proper narrative and

pds ae oe a
VOnyPies on ‘the thingy © &% I wound up having

O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:
O'BRIEN:
LANSDALE:

O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

-90-

to rewrite almost of all of it, and recast it,

and retell it in a “somewhat different form.
I'm about half-way through, that, but it'll be
‘oa book even so. .

ext that's good-fmainly on the Fhilippines

and the early period in Vietnam?

Unhmn.

‘Good, you know mats really eC)
. Well, there's neehy one big period in Vietnam

that isn't known too well, and most historians

have passed over itjand the | ones who haven't

have been championing a cause, and their work |
ray

“is quite suspect. Some of the French were

or ;
sort of agents e2 provocateurs at the time,
A.

. and they are more or less justifying what

they diay end leaving out. important parts of
it.
How about the French journalist [Jean] Lacouture?

What do you think’of his work? Is it Lacouture

that's done the thing on Ho [Chi Minh]? -

ros
eee I'm trying to remember. I think that's

who it was. Well, most-of the French writings

about Ho and some of the explanations in


ite

O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

-91-

official documents of the French, ‘trying
to explain him end 80 on, by friends, I found

' Ling

very interesting ena I-had. no way of, judg:

"really on itZthere was a tremendous sympathy

and so corth being -expressed, ana then'a very. -
A

; ; woo _
Strong attempt to work out an accomodation

ae

with hin’ afterwards, wethshim, by the French.

And again, a highly emotionel sensitivity to
wiih

any interference Awa what they were “trying to

do, and they saw almost any thing as interference.

sof what is written by. them, I read mindful

‘of their sensitivities. at the time and whet

they're trying to prevent anybody ever believing
that would be opposite at all) or something.
different at leastg oA it was just amazing.

The French press was screaming that I was
starting World War III in Vietnam in 'S5 ...
Mind if I get this on tape--well, it is

on tape, “I'm SOrrys) I didn't realize it was
going.

, os simply because I think there was a feeling

by the French colonialists in Indochina) of not

wanting to give up the French presence theres=~

-92-

"and it's a human, understandable type of a.
thing. They had been there and associated
there, and some ‘of them had spent their entire
lives there, and here they were having to
give up sonetningsel i Swiss journalist once
explained. it te me? t was like a man giving |
“up his. mistress and seeing some GS evy ina
big car driving by in the streetgand even ~
though he'd given NOX up, he'd just sey) well,
he hates that guy|bteause he got. the mistress
“allegedly with material means such: as an
automobile and maybe a fur coat and so on) and he:
isn't the man that the former guy was. 4 So
some of. this” feeling was very prevalent there

and for ‘some reason.or other, I happened to

po . suddenly become the focal point of it, through

: my name or sonething @asthey so that they
“went to great. enki of charging me with all
sorts of things that I was doing: I was ‘out

Sect forces oe
buying up the loyalties of set Courses with( -
‘millions of dollars, and things that would be)
hard to prove that - wasn't, mind you, except
fae to say, "Look, I didn't have a million

dollars to buy anything with." . 4nd they'd

ae

O'BRIEN:

-93-.

say, "Well, the U.S. government did, and you
. y A
were a secret agent for them, and so on. It

_ was very hard to disprove some of theirjtelk |

: \ : Va :
and say, Well, that just isn't so. Except
once in a while they'd get really wild and —

claim I was down--I walked in on a briefing,
A

. for oxeniple, with: French officers betting at how

rc

some American visitors from Washington asst

"down
at that very moment I was arrying to. buy off

a sect leader, and very naively, witha
suitcase full of moneypseA I didn't now

but the ‘guy was going to ambush me ena take
all the money and not do whatever I was going
to plan to do. And at that moment, I just
asked him, I said, “well, please Keep on with
your priefing{, I want to know whet dther the

+ wad

guy killed me or not. APrazy- Now these Aho *
tf]
were very responsible French officiels*and

wei)

“the fact that I'd be miles away from the scene

of some of these things never stopped the dawe
circulation of these stories. I don't know

how you ever stop that stuff,

* Yes
Yeats well how about people like Bernard Pall

+

and Patty # Bony’ and their writings? Are they .. .@

wf
[25] Honey


Loe.

LANSDALE: Well, they're very sound, very | sound. Fall's
" packground, as was Honey's, was out of
‘intelligence or information collection united
i - —_ Ld, their different countries. Fall's initial
"writings were all out of a French ermy historical.
he
sects" and I had to tell him one time Ika td read
some of his work originally by the original
author. “putf it was a deteiled military
history of operations that he'd delved intog |
et don't know, I doubt that it was intentional

plagarisn on his part. He was probably rushing

2

through, getting a book published>for academic
credits ‘end so on. And Honey/ the same way
. with British’ intelligence, who were quite
a“

active in Indochina during the French days. han
6 7 amo

But it was )-some of the stories and happenings A
were just nlmost incredible. Thé-.-—4=- Some
of the French journalists were ‘politically

ithe
‘partisan. They had connections with the

A
Communist Party or sympathies with them of
some sort. And Ho had been one of the
founders of the French Communist Party, so that

there was always a cultural or comradeship

. =
feeling of some sort theré, end vhen the


-95-

Americans started showing up on the scene
Sie

there was, very patern realistic feeling of F-

"Well, these are | our pesplecZthese Vietnamese,”

a

or Khmer 7 or Lao,® and you keep your

cotton-picking fingers off of them" type of
a thing that went to very great lengths J—~
Volatile emotions erupting on this type of a

thing. 711 remember one of the journalists,

“John Beret; published a newspaper in Saigon

and wrote a lot of the early propaganda for
individuals in the French rotate
ddventurer| types among them. ‘He then went to
Pnohm Penh »where he. started a weekly newspaper
and started also. writing speeches for LNoro dom |
Sihanoukgand the next thing I knew, Sihanouk

was" accusing me of plotting to murder him or
assnssinate hims PA T Been 't exer) @zerpbeen near
Cambodia, and I hadn't, thought | of Sihanouk |

when this happened. The governor of Siem Reap,
Rn.

. who had been very close to Sihenouk before--
, and Siem Reap is where “Angkor Wak and the

historical ruins are--suddenly died,and the
ray

story started seeping out a little bit with

Sihanouk charging that this governor, whose

O'BRIEN:

-96-

name was Dao Onn) and I were in a conspiracy
to murder him and take over the government .of
Cambodia. And it didn't do any good that I had

never met Me Onn ‘and never had any dealings

with him, and Cambodia was , way outside my

bailiwickg b but. this is the story that's gone

on and’ on and on.
Well, there. was a little bit of sruth to , that,” .

wesn't theret/gome involvement of CIA. cee
ep Chis as We 5G =

LANSDALE: Yeah? Well, he was a national leader and .

4

actually had formed the political groupings

initially that supported. Sihanouk and gave |
o7
him his political powerée=he was the organizer;

he was ‘the chief political lieutenant of

Sihanouk. And then apparently, he felt. that
Sihanouk was going sour, and he wanted to get
the government back into reflecting more the
will of the people. . How far he got, I don't

knows but: this was really something that

was foreign to me at the time.” got sent

back into Cambodia afterwards, from Washington,
with various military assistance groups / or

economic groups 7c presidential commissions”

-97-

and so ong and gach time they'd have Pnohm
: dust wet IY
Penh on the thing 7 'dasay, _ Wee better

check the embassy. there." Back would come

¢

word that] Xo, _Sihenovk was afraid that it.
tr were a member of the party, I would be
going in to murder him. 4 5 actually went in

one: time} and the ghief of police of Pnohm
“A
‘Penh met our party--along' with the’ foreign

minister end so on--at plane! when we came
= o " oo

downy and the Chief of Police walked right
next to me,and he said, "I'm your liason

A oS . A

man fromnwme'. eid I said, "You're keeping
an eye on me, I lmowg it's “allright. I'm
not going to murder your boss; I have no
idea of doing that." [Laughter] That is

7]

about "85, 166-~in which he played the

strange. ‘ And then Sihanouk made a movie--

dorimander! if Goyal Naval Intelligence foiling

. a great American spy, who happened to have

a a!

my name) and was a role played by some petaiee Fremchnan
par whe. was visiting theres, and I was out to
overthrow the isingdom,but, of course,our boy
; 3 A

hero thwarted the ugiy Americen and won the

girl, wno was the daughter of the Brazilian.

-98-

ambassador or something. Some French gal
played the role: I've been trying to get
a print of that or some way of seeing that
’ moviesAI'd love to see it, you Imow. It
sounds great and... . ‘Ulaughter]
O'BRIEN: - LEE hadn't heard about that: Weld) that 7
does hit. on Something though) *n regerd to
Southeast Asia. .. AS t understand, in that
| Dap Cnww* incident, inés there: was an Agency
involvement with th him, through a guy by the
name ot oF na the Agency does seem - .
‘to have a kind of free hand in some of these

Asian a
Southeast jnationss eid I'm thinking of the

(Auge 0]
APope situation in Indonesia as well. Can you

see any tocke put on them as'a result of
the change of administrations’how do you
react to this sort.of activity?

LANSDALE: Well, most of the things that they did that
had political consequences of any major size

at. all end certainly a thing agith ep crhuor

wrdcry
and also the Pope thing, ‘are only ,taken oy the

Agency efter approval up at topsides so as far

I

-99-

as brakes are concerned, they! ve hea them from

the beginning. However, the objectives and
agai rw)

the intent are approved) and not,,the means of ©

doing it--the nuts and polts--which are

supposedly overseen by- an ambassador. ” and

when we get down to the level of a country .
where: these things are happening, then I
think much. depends on the indiviguars}: the

- ambassador, and the station chief, _and how

‘they get along, and again, mostly on the. . +
Well, no it isn't either; it's a fifty-fifty
proposition. We have ambassadors who don't

+o ‘

want to know or er are opposed, all such things ,
and if an order comés down to do it,they very
unwillingly tell the guy to go ahead, but
watch it now, not too far. Fy station chief,
then, with orders to do some things) will have

“A

told the ambassador he semtP going to,thisg but
getters
he starts, in things, and he figures, ssh if he

a a a a eS LL ET OT TY TORT Ene OEE OEP DO COREE NN SUPE PCR vee EE Ty

‘goes back and tells the ambassador what's
happening, that He's not going to get any.

. “A
understanding and will probably get an order

Tmo : he
’ prohibiting him 2c doing something, and won't |
\ . 3 : . . =

oe a er SF

‘
4

i

j

1

1

“O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

. O'BRIEN:

Washington wants us to have this happen.

-100-

, ; w ;
be able to explain, Well, if I stop doing

this, then this other thing won't work, and _
€ -

wet oa,
The ambassador willysay,.No, I don't see it

that way. - Don't. do it? So I'm sure there are
things thes =onne. happening that aren't told for
this--for operational reasonsg and again, it's
a judgément of an individual on that thing.

It's not a policy type of a thing from the

“Agency.

Yes. # .
Yeah? Do you find any--in the time that

-you lire there in the middle fifties as well |

as when you go back in '60, 61, and later —
involvement in Vietnam--do you bind ai fferences
between ‘the embassies between the U.S. embassy
in, particularly, Pnohm Penh and Saigon?
I didn't notice ‘that. It might have existed),
and I wouldn't have even. known that. .
Well, there! s some feeling among people

dasa m
involved with Cambodien relations eer that time,
as T understand it, that somehow there's an’
involvement on the part of the South Vietnamese

in some of the groups like the .. .@

4 Sl A ates A Raalita bathers A treet Rar cranaetaletl in ininetl ehhh deity ath hicetelichtal  oleetnicnet tyne 82th deletes whale at Bencomeet

= ae an ete = eee en ce coat | ote «mm tenetlh Ate

ajo

LANSDALE:

-101-—

‘

yess . L come ber
oh, doen’ “4 Both the South Vietnamese and the

Tai were playing around with groups inside
Cambodial or with exile groups: that wanted |
to go back in Gembodia, and so: ong and I'm
not certain thet the imericans from either
Thailand or South Vietnam were fully aware

of. what” all was going on. And I'm not

certain that the: Americans or the Cambodian

| government people inside Cambodia knew what.
was going on, and were tending to exaggerate —

‘some of ‘this. Things get blown up out of all;

proportion in this... put) just. the fact that
there was antipathy and it would take this
form of expression, among others that were
going on... A t don't know which people
would rather go in and take over and run
canvodiet ne Thais or the South Vietnanese<?
it's about: a. ‘boss up which one, wea” down more
on the Khmers than the other. “ana Diem
used to follow the predictions of the royal

fortune—teller in-P nohm-Penh to Sihanouk.

.‘Apparently, they were spending a lot of
A

‘
intelligence money to find-out, you know, whats

O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

this was

-102-

happened in each others sessions and what

he was telling the guy. Then how useful

yy mind you,I don't lkmow.

. Well) do Jou rand) again, in passing on to

“A

' the task foree<-and the formation of that.
“Vietnam task force in the early part of _ a

’ the Kentie dy administration--do you fina eo

sensitivity on the part of the people, the
political appointéés, to what's going on

in South Vietnam? Are .you able to explain

what you're telling me right now about

- South Vietnam to these people?

Te only partially. They were as bemused by

the mechanics of getting decisions in Washing-

ton asthey were with the problem that they were:
!

employing the mechanics to solve. It was all .
sort of new to them,and they wanted to do a
, : “
good job, but in order to do it, they were
you. gfe)
suddenty working with these instruments, that

were foreign to them here. I think that the

aks: ;
princippes’ in the administration were not

entirely aware of thespeople they were dealing

with in Washington. I recall, at the time, scm Surplisess,

za Rusk was violently opposed in the department -

a a

103+
: . coc”
over where he was by some peopley end I
noticed at times that he wasn't aware that
he was, turning around and. asking a guy who)

minutes before: Rusk had come in to ninwee

. be fia Bepactoe: 1 called kim, A mo
among his. comrades, just, "This stupid jerk,"

cand so on, which I felt was ai sloyal--behing
the guy" s back, you know. rT was always
urging then to speak up in front of people

and 80 on, and they woula%lt do it. And the

F
‘same .damn thing was tous, GaatneiTeone of the.

. military against McNamara, for example.
we
ce F] Well, the McNamara’ and ‘the nuské/end their

y S asd se en)
unders, and deputy? “types of people, and

assistant secretaries, were trying ‘to cope with

in ctinctO ly Q
people that they, felt Were =faseinetively'

opposing and foot-dragging and so on,and
. A

trying’ to get that working,so that to get

: . ' then working on a given problem was really
the thing that they were concerned withgent

you'd suddenly say, "Well, we're going to
talk about _ba08,” oF Vietnang or Israel or

! 7 a sonethingS=Yes, Yes, Fes. What have you got

in = J paper you nowt And they were


cnet dea Dpa cept ote teas ent tec eich Arena baer emeatate ath Adsl Ah me ot il neds ete gis deen et danae Sabai cea Anam ain Dts ABE REETN A DORA 8 cates oo snemennmniasl covers

-10h,-

to hin thie guy a
watching, seo): "Well, itts-—just—Iivé really
z ark “Es he gogy to
done phis homework, end-is—it-gonha come.up

“/
with some thing or not?" rather than what is

the real problem here, and how would I solve
“a

it if I weren't sitting in this room in this

particular group, and so on. So there wes a. ...,
ral

PSso- then, working on this type of a thing which

®'BRIEN:.

LANSDALE:

I saw very much in the task force on Vietnang-~-

Gilpatric,I know,was shocked at the reactions
“A ray uo

. of some of the foreign service people that

Vv . .
came in at, rank of ambassador and so on, that
: A

were sort of the staff asSistents on the.

; assistant secretary and undersecretary level.

pu ae
They would ‘Start a meeting—infacb, I was

asked to be sort of yl forget what the title
was /-executive officer or something of it, and
they asked me to chair the meetings. Well, I'd
no sooner open it. thon these guys would be
passionately explaining way I doulan't be
sitting. in the chair of the meeting, see?

¥esh. Ye

I think it shocked some of the Kennedy

administration people. It suddenly revealed a

-105-

c-

feud end so ong ene I hadn't said it, and I
personally didn't care that much, you knowh
I'a say, "Have you got all the hate out of
your system now? Let's go on with the
meeting,’ ’ see. This of course, would activate
it more, but I would sey, "yer. look, we really
do have. Some problems here we've: got to get
to, and if you went, 121 meet you afterwards

& A
and westen have lunch or some thing, and you

. ray
can spoil my lunch by telling me what a
heel I am or something. But we've got work
to do. nF oo then, Gilpatric or somebody would.
tell me afterwards, "Do you think we better
take you off?" "Well, yeah. If it's going
2 Cc. -
to ortect, the work done, itis better +p take
me off. It's no fun for me to sit up and
: a
chair something under conditions like this,”
so... .0
' O'BRIEN: Week. Were you ever approached with the job
as ambassador to Vietnam?
Yas, Yes .
LANSDALE: ¥@ah+—~—Yeeho

O'BRIEN: Who was pushing thet?

CSO ce ea ood

-106-

the Cc

LANSDALE: I don't know. I heard about it (jess first

ee ee en:

‘Saturdey after the inaugurel--I “ghinik shat's
it. It was very early in the administration. ,
McNemara asked me to come down to the white
House end meet him there, and I thought it

was to brief him on something. tnd I was
“working én a number of intelligence matters.
in Defense at the tines axa I showed up) and

he askéd me to just wait outside, and. they
were meeting in the Cabinet roomy end as I!
said, it was essentially an NSC group. and
after a bit, they asked me to: come onv and’
they had me sit opposite the president.

And he looked at me, and he said, "Did Dean ©
[Rusk] tell you,’ I “vant you to be ambassador
to Vietnam?" I said, "No, he didn't mention
that." “Well, he hadn't at all; A yhere was
a te. painful silence, and I figured, “yell,
See, maybe he! 8 asking me if I want to be, or
would I accept the joo.” So I finally said,
“Well,it would be a great honor,’ and that was

the last I ever-heard of it. But,’ I heard

all sorts of rumors that ee wis for
st Tt -..

Washington, and~fuir+5 afterwards that Dean Rusk

Be en rc ee ce ee RR te te ot ee ore ade Need een et

-107-

was very much opposed to it, and opposed on

the ground that I-was a military man and they

didn! fwent military’ people in on the situation.
O'BRIEN: Yeeh. "‘Yasg .

. a oa

LANSDALE: And then later I <a met one of Rusk's staff

officers at the time, and he was telling me

ucd bt, yt
that Rusk was figuring) sms he could get.

me a job some other place or a promotion or

e .

something - to. get me out of the way at the bimes<
a sort of
| Lapparently & had becomena ‘parget for a lot of
and 65 on

. GF
’ gossip and rumors,jat the time. But after that,

then, thiey asked me--Kenne dy asked me pretty

Arstrassator
point blank--aboutDurbrow, and I said, "Well,
NN

after what you just asked me and so forth, I'm
a little hesitent, but you're the President and
you need the truthy so I'll just fell you right
now, I think he's a very ill man, his juagee

I

‘ : . noas 245.7
ment's impaired by his physical conditions,he's
a fine professional foreign service officer.and

could be used some_place, but don't keep him on

in Vietnam anymore. He Is sick#, he's on his

back a lot of the time, and you need so someone

‘very alert, wis “Lie ~wnoever it iss and pull him ©
Vv.

-108-

out." And they got--Rusk and everything, you
knowZ;"You're off your subject, boy." But I
said, "Well, Durby's an old friend of mine,
and I like the guys. os T saw a lot of him o
when I was in Vietnem on this brief visits aid
I think it's a shame that the guy's kept on —
there Lecause he was quite ill, in bad shape."

And Durby never forgave me for ith, it got

. right back to him that I had sacked him and

7 . ‘so on [¥cause he was withtwun after thaty but -

O'BRIEN:

- LANSDALE:

this: certainty didn't hurt his. career at all,
in any way, ena even though State put him on
a make ~ work job after thats but he held the
rank of ambassador which | is as high as you
can get in the foreign service. And he was

sad, he really was.

Well, how does {Frederick E.] Noiting come into

this ae
Well, Nolting came in,as-the, apparently)as the
“A

A &
foreign services rebuttal to my going on outdof Here

I remember both McNamara and Gilpatric asked

me about him,.and I didn't know him. I said,

"Well, I'a@ just go on what I heve heard from

|

other foreign service officers who respect
him very mach." So finally, Nolting was--

a “meeting wag arranged with Nolting, and

I liked him very much when fT talked wi ale Anning)
He asked me if I would give him some briefings
on Vietnam, which I did do. And when I wound»
up the end of that, I was asked again by .
McNemara, who said he was going to tell
Kennedy) end I said, “yell, this looks like

a very good man, and I think it's a sound
appointment." ” 7 didn't want to be. ambassador.
Jesus. ‘Daring the Eisenhower administration,
they wanted to male me anbessador Si” the
Philippines) and I begged them not to. I

think that's one of the world's worst jobs.
You're stuck where you can't do what your

job is supposed to be,and I knew they were
“a

“going to put me in: places where I'd be up

against Communist political leaders of some

sort, working the other side. And of course,
ral
you aren't in that position, but allegedly
ion ie oe
you ‘arey 224 you | pre~goingato have people running

pds
circles eround you, £F, “youl mow it and couldn't

em

lift a ‘Little Pinger to stop them. ard this

—

-110-

isn't my idea of a good spot to be in. You

_ just get belabored over that.

Well, did Nolting ever try to get you back to
A

Vietnam im an advisory position?

I think so. There were ea number of attempts

by the Vietnamese themselves, and unfortunately )
; : A.
some of them werecouched in terms of wanting

me to come out as ambassador, by the Vietnamese@
but Nolting and I had very friendly relations,
and I think he had proposed that I come on

out several tines. But these things would
usually only come to me sort of second or
third hands and one time apparently President
Kennedy had said something to the JCS because
suddenly my relations with the Chiefs went
down to leds than zero. and sub-2erog mA ID

finally asked General [Curtis E.] Lemay of

the Air Force, because I'm an Air Force officer,

what the trouble was. And he said; "You and
your ambitions to have four stars." JI said,
"What's this again?" Apparently Kennedy had
said something to the Chiefs of) what. would

A

thay think of my being given four stars and

being put in charge of operations in Vietnam?


O'BRIEN:
LANSDALE:
O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

-1lll- ..

And I-didn't kmow ebout it, and they took it

that r was pushing myself for it. I said

S504: Ny
again, “that isn 't,rté want to do.” So. this
. Generale
was about tne time that--no, maybe [William
Ba

Westmorelend] Westy was coming in about thens=

it wes around that time.

Well) the: ‘task force really forms up the instructions
A” . ot,

. oS
for Nolting, doesn't it%...
Yes.
'.. . for the next few years. Just what kind

of recommenéations come out of that task |!

' force?

Well, I was, only in on the very original one,
which was to undertake some things such as

‘changing the specific types of things to
. oY

meet a situation injthere. One of them was:

we would get a political section that would
work out better relations with the Vietnamese
government, a political section in our embassy,
and that the foréign service would go and
search through their own personnel for people
with some real political savvy to get info
guide,/ rather than control cr belabor or have

confrontations with the Vietnamese government

oe ee ne rr ne rN en

-112-

to carry out essentially political reforms,
and getting some of the just criticism of.
the opposition considered in the governing
boay. another thing was on the police, of
getting police training done so that they |
could cope with meeting enemy units, rather ”
than doing urban police work. In this, I

was begging them to at jeast get to a state
level

constebularynas far as American advisors were-

concerneds a and I wéen't certain that the U.S.

Army! s military police could cope with it, but
a
maybe they could gst a team of them in,axd

then I was pointing out that there were

constabulary officers and officers from other
countries, including South America and the

old Philippine constabulary, who knew the .

Lew-end- “order conditions--auite similar to

Vietnem-and bring them in if they wanted’ to -
go international. I.was trying to. get them

to get very pealistidtid solving problems by

_ changing the quality and the approach that ©

Aq
we had. We drew up an original draft that

_ went to the President, out of meetings that

A

~

be ee te end ee A a Lill Si Oa oe eg aha

-113-

lasted about ten days, at which point, at

Rusk's insistence, the task force went over

to State and becams a general, regular body ~
there. They then proceeded to rewrite our
original kw instructions and drefts and ~
everythings, Jy 0k both McNamara and Gilpatric
said<coming back from the White Houses "Ea,

you had better not get in there." I seid,

"If I can help in any way, I will." They said,
"Well, right ‘for the time being youlbetter not 7a n
go near that group, sees! £d aan actus ty didn't J aes
get in to. some of their. policy ronjbesén again’
in a fairly early period,on the thrust of
things in Vietnam,except for some of the
Defense people who were over there. [I would
talk to them on what was being proposed and.
going on, - but this was sort of second arid

third echelon type of a ‘thing, pulling back

out of it. “pat / initially, I + was actually
trying to get a quality U.S. representation

in Vietnam, and actually smaller egain than

it was at the time, end to pick a few key

things, and to concentrate on that ,and really
ra A

_=1ly-

to get the Vietnemese coping with their own
problems more effectively than they were
doing.
o ee .
O'BRIEN: Yeah. Well, between this time and the time ~
. . A Pitty 3 .
of the TaylorzRostow mission, ave you involved

in Vietnam on a kind of regular basis or . SO

LANSDALE: Uh, no.’..0ff and on I was, but again with

second- end: third-echelon type of problems.
I was seeing Gilvatric everyday end working’
very closely with him)so that. a lot of times »
as things would come wp, he would discuss them
™ with me. Bat again, 1 was trying to explain
who certain people were that were named, their
backgrounds, and their qualities, and certain »
events and places, ‘and going to maps with
him and describing terrain, and so on “chat
the situation really meant that was making
the problem. So I was fairly well out of it.
Fas a matter of fact, T was working with some

visiting Burmese on their concepts of defense

Pa
of a country) and @Béy they brought me in with
AN :

the Israeli who had had a mission helping them

with their defense problems in Burme. And the
slo Q-

‘Israeli hed tzin turned around to their Gefense

Saat Rare aam TORT eT TSE ST re DS VIS NY TON EOS Ce TN ODW DEI Yer OT meer STV MOT IVR OMCUNEN TUN VE TTOOT OF PORE PTUPES 8 EUS OE Oe eT

~115-

minister and some of the others and invited
~ dake
me to,look at wncir defense system in Israel.

At was quite enthusiastic about going and had
everything arranged and was to leave on a
Saturday, when about on a Wednesday or Thursday )
I was asked to go to Vietnam with the other
mission and stufi ef unfortunately had to
cancel out everything end-never got irlto see
what Twanted to see there.
O'BRIEN: . Well) you end up working on border actually,
. A a
tne San of the border , then, don't yout
on Be raytor- Ros.tow thing? a
LANSDALE: Yes. Yes.
O'BRIEN: What about that preoccupation? Where does
that idea come tromZis that Rostow's?
LANSDALE: Well, ‘Taylor was the one that charged me
. “with it. Taylor said, nyo 7 you foxes J” _
‘this is right 3 which startea ‘yin each
of you write down some of the things} oa
think we should look into and what you might
like to look into. "So I gave him a list of
nox

about twenty things, I'd like to look intoe?
oo A

—

none of them being this,of course. FS
. . . A .

--116-

wi ‘suggested some other subjects for other people

- ; him Oa
- : on the thing and gave it to thet, exd he
Sj . ;

4 ont

, called me back, said that it was a very interesting

fist oc

| Lo pbiat I had given him, and would I please work .
| on building a defense on the border. And I .
‘said, “KEEL what sort of a defense?” He said,
“Yell, a system of fortifications or a wire like
the “Tron curtain in Europe ? I said, "Good
God, you aren't going to do that, are you?"
And he said, "Well, look into it." So that

Suroosedly . yal Ss
washall I was suppoSed to do, and of course,

stir
Bo
a

I got called in on other things immediately.

@ But I wasn't even invited along to go in and
see Diem with him. I said,’ Look, these are
old friends of mine. If you'd like, way I'll -
‘do anything I can you can hit then high, and
* Tq. hit’ them low if you want. We can get
some things done that way. He said, “wed, you
aren't om our protocol List, so you “don't
attend any of these calls on the president.”

F we landed in Saigon, and the people from the

werd Prere and

presidency, met uss @& era Peylor end Rostow were

over talking with reportexs who were interviewing

femmes eee Aine see ek sma comer) momen A rag Uitabsaht Da natin a. ecemmmec Y neni mal ee’ 2 he en ssn,

-117-

them plane side, and these people from the —
presidency said, "President Diem wants you

-to come to dinner tonight@" and I said, "Well,
uth? feed o?
I better check “on my boss on this." Taylor was

busy, but I grebbed Rostow who wasn't talking

at the moment and told him, end he said, "Go
A
ahead. n Sof I said, “Well, I wasn't even on

the protocol, and everything. I don't care
about going up to these protocol meetings

‘ 7
anyhows tms I went in and saw Diem, whose °
A :
question was, "What's this mission doing here?

What are’ you all up to?" TI said, "Why don't

you wait,and they'll be in here to have a
ron
meeting with you tomorrow, and you'll find
A

out." And then it became very personal. We

just started talking over his two old friends

‘wth, and IT had dinner with him. Anna he

“prought his nephew in to join us--Nhu's boy, ©

oldest boy--who had a new toy missile, like a

‘rocket with a launcherg and I was trying to

explain to this youngster who was squatting

tf)
on the floor next to his uncle<the President: ta.
I suid, R

; i
who was eee eating dimer--you gon't point this

any
t hi imo2T didn't know how big a spring this

ce
a

--118-

thing had on it, whether it would take his
oN 0 he ;
head off or not. [a sot tex} I Ean to
shoot it up into the ventilating fan in the
ceiling. We spent dinner actually, taking
parachutes and things out of the ventilating.
fans,and the kid and I were climbing up
‘a laddes' to get these things out of the thing
in the palace. This was’ very different: from
an officiel protocol meeting.

O'BRIEN: Yes How is Diem at that point?

LANSDALE: He was a very changed man. ‘Ib was the first
time in our talks with each other.:... .
when I met him at the palace that night, his
brother Nhu came in for the first time and
sat next to himy and when TaskeS Diem a
question, his brother would. answer ito a and

Tid havé to tell him I wasn't asking him the
questions; I was asking his brother. <A very

' strange relationship at the times RAL
found that he was a talker--Diem was--and he
was very clear and concise in his statements
and had too big a grasp of details i# what-

.ever subject he wes talking ebout. It'd go

on for hours--details on it, which fascinated
. A

O'BRIEN:
LANSDALE:

O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

-119-

me but used to bore other people. “But he

. ; Y
dic know his countryy and its history, which
A

he would give at the drop of a hat. This

. evening in '61, seeing hin, he was very

hesitant in his talk and hadn't--it was

ov . +
mental hazard

something physical as well as,

or sonething, I felt.
fry CVIAERCD ©
DeShe go into thet later?

No. There wasj-mentally, people were telling

“me that his brother had ‘taken over in the

& ast . the
year following,t= “7a dominance onAthing.

.But this was a man that wasn't as sure of

himself as he had been when I had seen him
less than a year before. And there had been
one assassination attempt only, but the big
one had taken place ‘before I saw him in |

Januery or December of '60--the attack on

_the palace and so on. So it hadn't been an

outside, physical happening like that that
had caused the change.

Was he a spirituelist at all? -
uw

No, no. He wasn't superstitious. we He
se

was a very rational sort of a person--pragmatic.

-120-

O'BRIEN: ‘Well when you ged pack, you talk to President
Kennedy and Robert Kennedy, and John MeCone >
es IT understand, in a rether private meeting.

What happened here?

LANSDALE: Well, this was,when I came back, I met the
, A
‘President. I went in with ‘Taylor ‘and Rostow-- .

all oftis | did who - were out on the mission--and

| jo
‘he thanked us ‘all very much and as we were, he

-asked me to stey behind and talk to “himy ok

that was when he asked me to perform this

other service for him)which was initially to
He A

think about it,and if I came up with some
rg)

ideas, why to pt them dom, cfriefly—

on paper and give them to him. 7 4nd I said,
"Well, do you want’ to forget about Vietnam
for the time being »because I haven't written
my report yet about Vietnam." He said, "Yes,
this other takes. priority over i tis s0 I
didn't even finish writing my reports on what
I had seen in Vietnam at the time. [I went
immediately into this other work.

O'BRIEN: - Well, about t2 that time, there's at least some

. thine ng in terms of mimos that are going

i
to the President about the only wey to save Vietnam
“A

-121-
is with a rather sudstantial commitfment of
U.S. troops. Is that... .@ .
LANSDALE: Yes; there was some. Now where... . . Hmm,
there was some, and I can't remember just
where it was coming from. This was one of
the things, chat Diem asked me when I saw hin.
He asked: me if he should ask for U.S. troops,
and I said, "Do you need them?" He said, “
asked rou a question," and I said, "Well, I'm ;
asking, you, a very legitimate question on this

things aA I said,"Are you ready to admit that

ve,

you have so lost control of yourl situation

that you can't cope with it here?" And I said,
"You'd have to do that before you ever turn
around and ask for American troops in here."

And he said, "No, we can still handle things,

. Hy)
end you've answered my question, so apparently

: Fi Chad ,
<— he didn't ask. There hsve been some
wn SU ) CH
conversations, going on- -Ebn-Sure. with some of

Thad:
the Americans before thatg would be my guess

on this thing lecause he didn't say, "What
Tod o-
do you ‘think OL ja atce woreTesthens anything , ot

. Wa,

should I ask?" which was sort of like somebody

had recommenced this st some point,and I
A

rer

O'BRIEN: .

LANSDALE:

a

-1l22-

don't think it would have been completely in
Ow
Bis a Vie tnanese context.

Neéh, do you get any of this thinking when you

. get back? Any contingency planning or thinking

about the building , “of troop levels to a more
substential aever Sagoo linked with the
settling ‘of the Leotian question. first?

There might have been, and L might have known
some of it. I can't recall now of anys, it's
someplace in the back of ny head'there were

some things like that going on. I turned.

around, just took time off completely from

othen things and concentrated on this other

a

problem for a time afterwards. Actually, through

December of that year, I was sort of holed up

qY ;
and working on some things. My staff would get

in and out of some of these other things, and

ra)
I used to shove them in to take my place in

K uh,
meetings and so ong @= I pcan only then just
get very quick briefings on them, but they were
essentially supporting whatever McNamare and

Gilpatric were doings SO I'd just have them

_go in and report directly and work with them

Girectly.

O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

Bowl!

O'BRIEN:

-123-

he wore
Yess wie
Mesh. Who were the people, on you staff

at that point?

ao ‘ ,
Well, let's see?n One of them was Sam Wilson,
A

undse” now a brigadier general in n the Army fo

Jack Bowles: was a Navy Captain who went down -
. . 7 ;

to serve with the JCS afterwards and.is now

“with Standard Oil and working out of Singapore.

; foe Fhe
And I had five or six KX people Like that, but those

were my two princi bi?’ ones.

Well, this is about ready to run out, and we !ve
A

covered em quite quake a -_

/

